A federal judge in New York has disqualified prominent attorney David Boies from representing a victim of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in her defamation lawsuit against lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
At the same time, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska on Wednesday denied Dershowitz's motion to dismiss the suit altogether.
Virginia Giuffre claims she was forced to have sex with friends and acquaintances of Epstein from 2000 to 2002, including Dershowitz. Dershowitz denies the allegations and has publicly called Giuffre a liar on multiple occasions, leading her to sue him for defamation.
Giuffre also is suing over Dershowitz’s claim that she conspired with her lawyers to accuse him falsely. As a result, Preska said, Boies and his law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, culd not represent Giuffre because the legal team had become witnesses, and could not continue to represent her.
In the ruling, Preska didn’t consider whether Giuffre’s claims are truthful. The judge instead made a preliminary ruling that, if all of Giuffre’s claims were true, the law provides her with the right to sue Dershowitz.
Ethics rules bar lawyers from representing a client in a case where the lawyer is likely to be a witness on a significant issue. Because Giuffre’s complaint included allegations relating to Dershowitz’s allegedly false claims of conspiracy between Giuffre and her Boies Schiller lawyers, the firm is “hoist on its own petard,” requiring it to be disqualified, Preska said.
“Giuffre raises the specter of one set of BSF lawyers’ examining another set of BSF lawyers, including name partner David Boies,” she wrote.
Dershowitz was part of a team of lawyers that negotiated a 2008 plea deal for Epstein over criminal charges in Florida, which required him to serve just 13 months in a Palm Beach, Florida, jail with daily work release.
Alexander Acosta, the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, resigned as President Donald Trump’s labor secretary in July amid controversy over the deal. Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell in August while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The case is Giuffre v. Dershowitz, 19-cv-3377, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
This report contains material from Bloomberg News.