Russian model wants Leon Black’s lawyers kicked off N.Y. lawsuit
Leon #Leon
(Reuters) – A Russian model who is suing Leon Black for defamation and sexual misconduct asked a judge on Thursday to disqualify one of the billionaire’s law firms, saying it created a flagrant ethical conflict when it hired a top Manhattan prosecutor earlier this month.
Perry Guha LLP, a small New York firm that is representing Black in Guzel Ganieva’s lawsuit, last week said it hired Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, who previously led the trial division in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, as “of counsel.”
Black, the former head of private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc, has denied Ganieva’s claims that he subjected her to numerous unwanted sexual advances, including an alleged rape in 2014, and then lied by calling her claims “fiction” and accusing her of extortion.
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Illuzzi-Orbon received confidential information about Black when Ganieva reported his alleged sexual misconduct to Manhattan prosecutors last year, Jeanne Christensen, Ganieva’s attorney, wrote in a Thursday filing in New York County Supreme Court.
“Incredibly, out of the several thousand litigation firms in NYC, the one law firm Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon decided to associate with happened to be the same law firm representing Black in this case,” Christensen wrote.
Illuzzi-Orbon supervised 400 lawyers in the D.A.’s office, including the special victim’s bureau prosecuting sex crimes. In private practice, her career options “were endless,” Christensen wrote.
Perry Guha has only two partners and five other lawyers, Christensen said, making it impossible to wall off Illuzzi-Orbon from its work on the Black case.
Christensen, a partner at Wigdor, said in a phone interview that Black, given his wealth, “has access to justice in a way that the average person does not, and we keep seeing it.”
Perry Guha in a statement called the move to disqualify it “nothing more than an exercise of gamesmanship,” adding that it “may warrant sanction.” Illuzzi-Orbon will be working on “select new matters” and has had no involvement in the Black case at the firm, it said.
A spokesperson for Black said neither he or his attorneys “are aware of any investigation and have never been contacted by the district attorney’s office on this matter in more than 18 months.”
Black has separately sued Ganieva and Wigdor in Manhattan federal court, accusing them of engaging in a “criminal enterprise,” including by falsely linking Black to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Black later dropped his racketeering claims against Wigdor, and a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit altogether, calling it “dubiously pled,” “legally tenuous” and “threadbare.” Black has appealed the ruling.
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David Thomas