A federal judge expressed skepticism about a pair of lawsuits that victims of Jeffrey Epstein had filed against two banks, suggesting he may dismiss them before they have a chance to go to trial.
At the outset of a Monday afternoon hearing in Manhattan federal court, US District Judge Jed Rakoff unfavorably compared the lawsuits against Bank of America and BNY Mellon to two similar lawsuits he had previously overseen, against JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. JPMorgan agreed to settle the case for $290 million. Deutsche Bank agreed to settle for $75 million.
Rakoff said the language in the lawsuits against Bank of America and BNY Mellon — which were brought by the same attorneys and filed in October — was “frequently conclusory” and appeared to lack sufficient detail to demonstrate what the banks did wrong. He called the lawsuits “a model of high-pitched rhetoric.”
“‘Knows’ without saying by whom is vague. ‘Affiliated’ without saying what that means is vague,” Rakoff told David Boies, an attorney who brought the case. “A lot of that language is in the complaint.”
At the end of the hearing, Rakoff gave the lawyers who brought the lawsuits on behalf of Epstein victims — David Boies, Sigrid McCawley, Brad Edwards, and Brittany Henderson — two weeks to revise their cases with more specific details about their allegations.
The judge said they would be permitted to use material they had already gathered as part of the discovery process in the case, but should put a hold on additional depositions and subpoenas until he issued a ruling, which he said could come at the end of January.
The lawsuits allege that Bank of America and BNY Mellon aided in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation by providing him with banking services and then ignoring red flags tied to his transactions.
Epstein, a well-connected financier, killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on criminal sex-trafficking charges. One of his associates, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking girls to him.
Monday’s hearing was scheduled for the judge to weigh motions to dismiss the two lawsuits outright.
Charlotte Taylor, an attorney at the law firm Jones Day representing Bank of America, argued the lawsuits consisted of “recycled boilerplate allegations” and that they could not prove the bank provided anything other than “routine banking services” to Epstein and his associates. Felicia Ellsworth, an attorney at WilmerHale, said the plaintiffs couldn’t prove anyone at BNY Mellon had the “state of mind” to be found liable.
Boies told Rakoff that the banks should have noticed enough smoke around the transactions from bank accounts belonging to Epstein and his associates to know there was a fire. Aside from Epstein’s 2008 criminal conviction in Florida, he had been dogged by civil litigation for years, Boies said.
Rakoff expressed skepticism that the pattern of facts alleged in the lawsuit would be enough.
“Last I checked, that’s not enough to survive a motion to dismiss,” Rakoff said. “You need to have enough allegations as to specific facts.”
Following the hearing, lawyers for the Epstein victims appeared eager to revise their lawsuits and include the information they obtained through the discovery process. Rakoff said that material may be redacted on the public docket.
“I think he’s giving us a chance,” Sigrid McCawley, an attorney at Boies Schiller Flexner, told Business Insider.
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