The relationship between a prince and his two ex-lawyers began “like a fairy tale,” an attorney for the prince’s former companies told a Manhattan jury yesterday. Linda Goldstein of Covington & Burling told a packed courtroom that Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei paid the “attractive and highly articulate” husband and wife British legal team of Faith F. Zaman and Thomas W. Derbyshire millions of dollars to represent him and his former companies. “He gave them the keys to the palace,” Ms. Goldstein said during opening arguments in Casa De Meadows Inc. v. Zaman, 601685/07. But the fairy tale took a grim turn when, according to Ms. Goldstein, the couple abused the prince’s trust to “line their own pockets in ways that were both spectacular and spectacularly petty.”
In 2007, Prince Jefri, 56, who appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, and companies he previously controlled, including Casa De Meadows Inc. and Amedeo Hotels Limited Partnership, sued the couple for some $7 million. The couple in turn insists the prince cheated them out of roughly $11 million in legal fees.
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