In my own deposition, he rightly tried to stick to the case. But we had a history between us, so the banter would quickly devolve into personal stories of his clients whom I had prosecuted as a state prosecutor years before, or to his taking shots at me for supposedly overprosecuting those cases. At one point, I came back at him for his familiarity with divorce lawyers in town because he had hired one himself a time or two. We both had a laugh. The other lawyers in the room really didn’t know what to do with us. Jeffrey had his army of serious attorneys over there and it was really just Fred and me firing back and forth and having a little too much fun.
Fred had a hard time accusing me of what Jeffrey was accusing me of. At the time, Fred was representing Russ Adler in the criminal case that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was then prosecuting against him for his activities in the Ponzi scheme and RRA. Russ’s name was on the firm’s door, and the best that the government could come up with was to stick him with a charge for an illegal campaign contribution. Fred was confident in his representation of Russ, knowing that he was not an intricate part of the Ponzi scheme or any of the serious crimes that went along with it. So, accusing me of being involved, given that I was many levels under Russ while at RRA, was way too far-fetched for Fred.
Rather than attempt to attack me for being involved in a Ponzi scheme that he knew as well as anyone I had nothing to do with, Fred instead took the high ground and sought to dismiss my case on grounds that I had suffered no damages from Epstein’s malicious allegations.
To prove this point, Fred presented me with my various legal commendations. He wanted to get me to admit that after Jeffrey Epstein sued me, my status as a trial lawyer had only continued to elevate. He made me admit that the various awards I had received were not any I had applied for but were distinctions I had received as a result of recommendations and recognitions by my peers. He then went through a list of settlements and large jury verdicts I had won for clients despite my allegations that Epstein’s lies had hurt me.
He had a point. I saw where he was going but couldn’t do much about it.
Next he went back to 2009, when the Ponzi scheme had destroyed the RRA law firm. When Jeffrey Epstein attacked me with false allegations in 2009, my reputation as a lawyer on a national scale was virtually unknown, a fact I could not deny.
Fast-forward four years, and by all objective ratings my profile had increased exponentially. His whole argument was that, even assuming Jeffrey Epstein intended to harm me with a false complaint against me, I had to concede that it had not worked. I had not, he said, suffered any damages. He stated on the record that I not only had to prove Epstein’s malicious intent, but also that his falsehoods had caused provable damages to me. Without them, I simply had no lawsuit.
Before that point, Epstein had hired wind-up-doll lawyers that would march ahead in lockstep, carrying out his orders by attempting to prove the unsupportable false allegations he had filed against me. That strategy made my life easy. Fred’s strategy did not. His quick change in focus on different elements of the case—causation and damages rather than liability—caught me off guard.
Fred took my deposition twice and gained some ground in each. I left the third deposition thinking that if I was on their side and had to try this case, I would admit to the wrongdoing of filing the false complaint and put all my eggs in the no-damages basket.
* * *
Here we were, on November 10, 2017, and I was about to have another deposition, my fourth, taken. Epstein’s side of the table was filled with lawyers, as always. Darren Indyke, who was a staple at every Epstein event, was situated in his normal spot at the far end of the table in order to monitor and report back to Epstein everything that happened. Next to him was Jack Goldberger. But this time, there were some unfamiliar faces, too. In the next chair was a sandy-haired woman, wearing glasses. I later learned that she was the paralegal. Next to her and closer to me was a lawyer whom I did not know at the time but came to know as Kara Rockenbach. Closest to me was Scott Link, the main litigator now holding the Epstein reigns.
Scott was a longtime insurance defense lawyer with a reputation for being fearless in the courtroom. He and his legal team had at least ten Bankers boxes of material in the room. Every piece of material was marked and all of the lawyers on their side seemed to have reviewed every document in every box. They still had to work with bad facts, given that their client had falsely and maliciously attempted to ruin my business and professional reputation, but throughout the seven hours of examination Scott chipped away and scored points where points could be scored.
He picked up where Fred had left off a few years before. By that point, I was running a successful law firm and had many well-publicized settlements and trials. I went into that deposition thinking that Epstein had hired a new lawyer who would be ill-prepared and might try to prove what was false and unprovable. I left knowing that he had a legal team that was dedicating 100 percent of its time to this case and was intent on disproving my damages claim.
This was problematic, and Scott was taking the point further than Fred had taken it. Scott was saying not only that since Epstein’s malicious complaint had been filed against me in 2009 my career had improved, but also that many significant and high-profile cases I had handled had come to me as a result of Epstein. In short, he was saying that Jeffrey Epstein’s malicious action against me was the best thing to ever happen to me. Scott was very good, and his approach effective, a fact I realized while in the witness chair. But I couldn’t do much about it. This move made our case much more complicated.
The case was set to go to trial on December 5, 2017. Unsurprisingly, Epstein again moved for a last-minute continuance, which the judge granted despite having guaranteed that there wouldn’t be any additional continuations. He set the new trial date on March 13, 2018. Epstein’s team was filing new motions nearly every day in an effort to limit the scope of the case and ensure that the jury would see less and less of the evidence we had accumulated on Epstein and his sexual misconduct.
Judge Hafele was meticulous and thoughtful about striking a fair balance between allowing enough of the underlying information about Epstein’s sex activities to create a context, but not allowing so much that it would be prejudicial to Epstein. Of course, it was our position that the jury should hear everything.
It was only after a full presentation of all the available evidence of Epstein’s crimes and his large number of co-conspirators that, we argued, the jury could assess the degree of maliciousness of Epstein’s false claims about me.
Jeffrey Epstein’s team took an extreme view in the other direction. From their standpoint the case should have been limited to only the information that was available to Jeffrey Epstein about the RRA Ponzi scheme. That was all the jury needed in order to determine whether Epstein had any basis for believing I could have been involved. All of the allegations of sexual crimes he committed should be kept out.
Judge Hafele took hours of arguments and presentations before ruling on what evidence the jury would and would not hear. Ultimately, he ruled that in the summer of 2009, when I was working at RRA, I was the lead attorney in charge of litigating cases against Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of three individuals—Courtney, Lynn, and Marissa. The discovery that was being sought during that time was related to those cases. Therefore the jury would be able to hear from those three victims and could assess the validity of the discovery I took. However, Courtney, Lynn, and Marissa’s testimony was going to be restricted significantly. They could testify about their ages when they were recruited and say that the illegal sexual conduct had been committed against them on multiple occasions. However, the play-by-play and gruesome details of that conduct, and the extraordinary way in which it had damaged their lives, was going to be excised from this trial. The court felt that this type of testimony would be more prejudicial than probative, or, said differently, more harmful to Epstein than relevant to what the jury had to decide.
Virginia Roberts would also be allo
wed to testify, but only in a limited capacity. She was directly knowledgeable of the falsity of some of the allegations Epstein had made in order to justify his claims. Judge Hafele was going to allow her to testify about the fact that she had traveled on Epstein’s plane while underage, for example (despite Epstein’s insistence that no underage girls were ever on his plane), and a few other very narrow points, but nothing else.
The dozens of other victims who could have explained in horrid detail the factory of abuse that Epstein had created were not going to be allowed to testify in this trial. For Epstein, this ruling from the judge was a huge win.
In every trial, there are these types of legal arguments about what the jury should get to hear or see. I watched as Judge Hafele carefully decided. While I had not agreed with some of the comments he had made many years prior, I believe he treated both parties fairly and that his rulings on what would be admitted into evidence made sense. He was letting us admit enough evidence to prove that Jeffrey Epstein had filed a false complaint against me for the purposes of extortion and intimidation, but he was not letting us admit evidence that might lead a jury to find in my favor based on the serial nature of Epstein’s sexual abuse. While this was not the case we wanted to present, it was fair.
FORTY-SEVEN MY HERO IS GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN
MORE IMPORTANT TO ME THAN any case was the fact that Papa was not doing well. He had played tennis until he was almost ninety years old, at which point he had a total knee replacement. He thought that after the operation he would be serving and volleying again. I did, indeed, take him out on the tennis court, but he never played competitively again. It sounds kind of funny to say that a ninety-year-old not competing was a big deal, but up to that point it was hard to imagine his not making it to the club every day for at least a few games. To give you an idea of how much tennis and competition meant to Papa, I’ll tell a story. The last match he played before his surgery was against my father-in-law, Manny, who was forty years younger. While not a lifelong tennis player, Manny was a good athlete and was determined to beat my octogenarian grandfather. Papa started serving and on the first point, tripped over his shoe lace and fell on his face.
I ran to help him up, “Are you okay?” “Did he return my serve?” Papa immediately responded. “Yeah, he did.” “Then I’m not okay,” Papa said, making clear that the result of the point was all that really mattered.
Papa got up. And Papa won. Unfortunately, that would be his last singles match.
After his surgery, I watched as his health slowly declined. We talked four or five times a week about sports, the kids, my law practice, politics, and whatever else came up. But it was still sad watching his final days come.
My mom called and told me he was in the hospital and that he didn’t look well, so I flew to Jacksonville to see him, taking my wife and oldest son with me. We had decided that our two younger sons were too young for that experience, so they stayed home with my in-laws. It was December 22, 2017, and we visited with Papa in the hospital. He was ninety-six. The doctors had diagnosed him with acute leukemia and given him only a few more days to live. My cousin and I went to his house and made up his bed so that he could come home for those final hours.
Papa was too weak to get out of bed, but never too weak to crack jokes. He was still challenging my oldest son to tennis matches on his deathbed. “Blake,” he called out to my son, “come here.” Blake approached the bedside thinking his great-grandfather may need something. “You want to get our rackets and go play? You might have a shot at winning today.” He told Terry how pretty she was and how lucky I was that he hadn’t met her first. He remembered so many things even I had forgotten, and all day I sat and listened as he still commanded the room.
He talked about his old stick-shift Datsun that he taught me to drive when I was thirteen years old. He blamed me for losing a doubles match he and I had played when I was twelve against two ladies at his club. This, of course, prompted me to remind him of the first time I had beaten him, later that same year. We laughed together about all our good times.
I had to get back home for Christmas, so I was trying to tell him goodbye. But I knew that it was a different kind of goodbye from others, and of course he knew it, too.
Terry was hugging him on one side of the bed, with my son on the other. When they left the room, he sensed that I was trying to tell him a deeply felt and final goodbye. He wouldn’t let me do it. Instead, he said, “Don’t do this, I am going to be fine.”
I said, “I know you are, and I can’t wait to see you again, but if anything happens and I don’t, then just know I already miss you.”
Flying home, none of us on the plane talked to each other. When we woke up the next day, on Christmas morning, my kids were happy to see that Santa Claus had come during the night. We were hosting Terry’s family and I called to check in with my mom.
Shortly after we hung up, Papa died. Christmas was always his favorite day of the year. I decided to assume that since he never wanted anyone to be sad, he had chosen to die on Christmas when we would all be forced to be happy, that day and for all the Christmases to come. According to the doctors, he should have died days before, but he held on until it was the right time.
Any time I ever had a difficult decision to make, I would call Papa and ask what he would do. Whether I had been leaning that way or not, I nearly always went with the advice he gave me. He had never steered me wrong.
That didn’t change after he died. I would think about what he would do and hear his advice as if he were still alive. Even though he was ninety-six, I was still heartbroken that he was gone. He had shaped my life and guided me in so many ways, it was impossible to add them all up. I flew to Jacksonville, gave the eulogy through my tears at his funeral, said goodbye, and sadly flew back home to Fort Lauderdale.
I needed a new focus after his death, a way to dedicate myself to something in the way Papa had dedicated his life to his family. With our first trial coming up under the new Edwards Pottinger name, I turned all of my attention to the client who needed our help the most at that time, certain that this was what Papa would have told me to do.
In January 2018, we represented a young woman who’d been sexually assaulted while working as a steward aboard a 150-foot private yacht docked in a Fort Lauderdale marina. After a long and hard-fought trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of our client for almost $71 million, which we were told was the largest verdict in a single-plaintiff sexual assault lawsuit in U.S. history. I sensed Papa was proud looking down. It was justice for our client. Unfortunately, it also added to Epstein’s primary defense in my lawsuit against him because it allowed him to argue that my results as a lawyer continued to improve, and thus I hadn’t been damaged by anything he’d said in his complaint.
Trade-offs are always part of law practice. This was the ultimate example of that.
FORTY-EIGHT THE FUN NEVER STOPS
WHILE I WAS TRYING THE yacht assault case, Epstein, through his lawyers Link & Rockenbach, was busy taking last-minute trial depositions in my personal case.
Jack Scarola sent me the transcript of the deposition of former RRA attorney Bill Berger, during which Bill was asked questions that told me Scott Link had in his possession certain emails that were attorney-client privileged and never should have been turned over to Epstein. I told Jack that Epstein’s having gotten hold of them was not just a hunch, it was a fact. Jack, not totally convinced, said, “We’ll see.” Because of this transcript, despite being overwhelmed with the other trial, I paid close attention to the exhibit lists that were being exchanged in anticipation of the Epstein trial.
On March 2, 2018, just before the trial was set to begin, Epstein’s counsel filed a pleading that included at least forty-nine privileged emails spanning more than one hundred pages. The emails had never been lawfully provided to Epstein or his counsel. They were emails where I was discussing my client with other lawyers from my firm in 2009. The emails included information on the strength
s and weaknesses of our cases as well as our legal and tactical strategy—the exact type of information that would give an adversary an unfair advantage, and which an adversary is prohibited from obtaining. Jack was shocked that Epstein had them and that the privilege had been violated. I myself was not surprised. I had told everyone years before that this was going to happen. Epstein always got what he wanted, especially that to which he was not entitled to have.
I knew from experience that laws and court rules never stood in the way of Jeffrey Epstein. His manipulation permeated everything he did. The nature of the emails forced us to do something about it, though, because the attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct. It is a privilege belonging to the client that can’t be waived by the attorney. When the stolen emails were written back in 2009, I was the attorney working on behalf of Courtney, Lynn, and Marissa. Now, I was the protector of them and their private information. My being the client in this other case did not make it okay for protected information to be disseminated to Epstein.
We raised the violation with Judge Hafele that same day, which happened to be the Friday before trial was set to begin. The court ultimately ruled that these newly listed privileged exhibits could not be used at trial and would not form the basis of a last-minute continuance—a delay we all knew was one of Epstein’s objectives. True to form, Epstein had his lawyers file a last-minute emergency appeal of the judge’s ruling protecting the documents. My appellate lawyers at Burlington & Rockenbach were confident that the Fourth District Court of Appeal would not take the appeal from Epstein’s lawyers at Link & Rockenbach. I was not so sure.
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