Leon Black sues law firm behind abuse accusers’ cases

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Billionaire financier Leon Black has sued a law firm over explosive tweets that he says hastened his exit from Apollo Global Management, accusing the firm of smearing him with false allegations in an effort to extract “exorbitant” fees.

The complaint seeks to turn the tables on the Wigdor firm, which has soared to prominence over the past decade by representing women in #MeToo-related claims against men such as disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein.

Black is alleging malicious prosecution of a civil claim in which Wigdor represented Black’s ex-mistress Guzel Ganieva, who accused him of abusing her during their relationship and then damaging her reputation by accusing her of extortion.

Ganieva first made her allegations public in March 2021, in a social media post that she allegedly composed with Wigdor’s “encouragement and help”, the complaint said. He stepped down from Apollo the same month.

Her assault claims formed the core of a lawsuit that the firm filed on her behalf later that year. They followed damaging revelations concerning Black’s longtime association with Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender to whom he paid $158mn for tax advice and other professional services.

In his lawsuit against Wigdor, filed in New York state court on Monday, Black alleged that the law firm pursued Ganieva’s complaint “even after it knew the allegations were demonstrably false” and later “threaten[ed] to file baseless, unsubstantiated lawsuits if he did not kowtow to Wigdor’s exorbitant demands”.

According to the complaint, “[Wigdor] has a unique business model: it threatens to sue defendants with scandalous allegations that can be avoided only at the cost of a large settlement, of which Wigdor takes a substantial cut.”

Wigdor partner Jeanne Christensen called Black’s lawsuit “frivolous” and said it was “meant to scare and warn other women, and lawyers who may represent them”. “Sadly, there are always lawyers willing to file such nonsense when someone like Leon Black is paying the hourly rates,” she added.

Ganieva’s complaint against Black was dismissed in May after a judge concluded that she had lost her right to sue when she accepted millions of dollars in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement.

Black had earlier sought to frame her lawsuit as part of a conspiracy with Josh Harris, a former top Apollo executive, to unseat him as the firm’s chief executive, in a separate lawsuit. But a federal judge threw out that claim last year, calling the theory “conclusory, vague, indirect, clever and cute”.

The billionaire is still battling legal claims asserted by two other women who are represented by Wigdor, both of whom allege they were assaulted by Black at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.

Black’s lawyers have sought to cast doubt on the credibility of those accusers, one of whom is a pseudonymous Jane Doe who is said by Wigdor to have Down’s syndrome and autism and the developmental capacities of a 12-year-old.

Private investigators working for Black’s lawyers last week visited Doe’s mother, father, sister, aunt, and cousin, and the father of her youngest child, according to a sworn affidavit that one of them filed in federal court on Monday.

Black’s lawyers said the visits were “legitimate steps to investigate claims that he knows to be untrue”.

They said that some members of Doe’s family had cast doubt on several central claims of the lawsuit, including those concerning her personal history.

Wigdor lawyers said the investigators had been hired “to harass and intimidate” Doe, in court papers submitted after the firm learned of the visits last week.

The visits, Wigdor added, were a “blatant attempt to send a strong and disgusting message to [Doe] that should she proceed to assert her claims against Black” she would place “the safety of her immediate family . . . in jeopardy”.