Little St. James Island, in the U.S. Virgin Islands Little St. James Island, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a property owned by Jeffrey Epstein. Photo: Gianfranco Gaglione/AP

Attorneys representing the victims of Jeffrey Epstein were pursuing divergent strategies in civil lawsuits against the deceased financier and accused sex trafficker's U.S. Virgin Islands estate, as a federal magistrate judge on Tuesday ordered fact discovery in the cases to proceed.

Roberta Kaplan, who is representing an unnamed Epstein accuser, said that her case would center on the testimony of her client and an expert witness. There was no need, she said, to file a new complaint or to dig into Epstein's complex web of businesses, which have been alleged to have aided the millionaire's abuses.

Lawyers from the New York firm Boies Schiller Flexner, meanwhile, said they are contemplating a far different approach. They plan to call former alleged co-conspirators who have been accused of helping Epstein procure young women and underage girls for his sex ring, and said they would rely on the testimony of supporting witnesses, as well as a range of documents that could shed light on how Epstein's corporate network operated.

The parties appeared in Manhattan federal court Tuesday for a conference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman of the Southern District of New York, who has been tasked with managing pretrial issues in lawsuits brought by 16 women against the Epstein estate.

Attorneys for the estate have been trying for months to pitch plaintiffs and their counsel on participating in a multimillion-dollar victim compensation fund to settle their claims out of court. Though the program had initially gained little traction, Bennet Moskowitz said Tuesday that the "vast majority" of plaintiffs had come around to the idea, which now has "almost uniform support" from the accusers.

The status of the victim compensation program came into question, after U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George last month hit the estate with liens for alleged criminal activity, freezing all of its assets, including an account used to fund its regular operations.

Moskowitz said Tuesday that the fund would be unable to proceed as long as the liens remained in place, and the estate was in danger of not making payroll or being able to pay its attorneys.

"This is without precedent in the Virgin Islands or elsewhere, as far as we can tell," said Moskowitz, a partner with Troutman Sanders.

"So as I stand here today, I don't know when the claims process will be established," he said.

Kaplan, who has expressed skepticism of the compensation fund, said that concerns raised in the Virgin Islands were "not unfounded," and pushed for the civil cases in New York to move forward.

"I think that only highlights the importance of getting these cases moving, getting discovery moving," she said.

Freeman said there was little she could do about the situation unfolding in the Virgin Islands, and set a June 10 deadline for the close of fact discovery in the Manhattan civil cases.

While Kaplan said she would take a "streamlined" approach, Sigrid McCawley, of Boies Schiller who is representing several plaintiffs, said she would likely file an amended complaint, based on the information her team obtained in discovery.

Other attorneys present at the hearing said that they intended to depose Epstein's corporate entities and would decide later whether to update their complaints. Freeman said the parties have until April 30 to submit amended complaints.

Epstein filed his will in the Virgin Islands just days before he was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell last August while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Epstein's death, which has been ruled a suicide, ended the criminal case against him, and his victims have since turned to civil litigation in order to secure money damages against his estate.

 

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