A federal judge has agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought against Leon Black after the plaintiff in the case, who had accused the private equity billionaire of rape, said she was “medically incapable of continuing” and at risk of “acute psychiatric crisis”, including suicide. The woman known only as “Jane Doe”, who claimed in a lawsuit that was first filed in July 2023 that she had been “handed off” to Black by his associate Jeffrey Epstein and then sexually assaulted by him, had been acting without a lawyer in the case. Doe has alleged that the assault occurred in 2002, when she was a teenager.
An attorney for Black, who has strongly denied Doe’s allegations, said his team was pleased that the judge had dismissed the lawsuit. Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, said in a statement that the lawsuit should never have been brought in the first place and repeated earlier claims that Doe’s complaint was a “work of fiction” filled with lies and fabrications. In a legal filing, Black’s lawyer Michael Carlinsky said Doe’s request to dismiss the case – which Black did not oppose – “has been made voluntarily by Ms Doe without any settlement, compromise, or inducement by Mr Black”.
The Wall Street billionaire, who was Epstein’s friend and former client, has separately come under fire in Washington, where the US House of Representatives voted unanimously in September to hold him in criminal contempt for defying two congressional subpoenas ordered by the House oversight committee, which is investigating Epstein, his relationships to powerful people and the government’s handling of Epstein investigations. One of the congressional subpoenas that Black was accused of violating would have forced him to hand over all nondisclosure agreements to which he was a party. Black attended a voluntary closed-door interview with the oversight committee in June but walked out shortly after it started and was accused by members of stonewalling.
He then declined to appear for a subsequent congressional deposition. Black’s lawyers have said he was being targeted by a “political witch-hunt” and filed a lawsuit against the oversight committee to block the subpoenas, claiming the committee was exceeding its authority. The contempt resolution has been referred to the US Department of Justice, though it is not clear if the department will pursue criminal prosecution.
Black has emerged as a key target of congressional investigators because of his relationship with Epstein, who provided financial services to Black between 2012 and 2017. After Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state prostitution charges in 2008, including procuring a minor, Black became Epstein’s largest client, paying him a total of roughly $170m in fees, according to an investigation by the Senate finance committee’s ranking member, Ron Wyden. In his statement before the oversight committee in June, Black wrote: “I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019.” But Black acknowledged that he did know about Epstein pleading guilty in “2008 to state charges relating to prostitution involving a minor”.
Epstein died in prison in 2019 after he was charged with sex trafficking. The dismissal of the Doe v Black lawsuit comes at what could have been a critical moment in the case, which was being heard in the southern district of New York. Both sides had been ordered to review thousands of pages of documents that were due to be unsealed, which were related both to that case as well as a separate class-action lawsuit brought by Epstein victims against JP Morgan, in which Doe received a financial settlement.
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