FILE: Leon Black, chairman and CEO of Apollo Global Management LLC, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, US, on Tuesday, May 1, 2018.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A woman he had accused Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black of rape She herself at the New York mansion of the late sex predator Jeffrey Epstein agreed to drop her lawsuit against Black.
The woman’s lawsuit, Cheri Pierson, was “dismissed with prejudice and without cost to either party,” according to a filing in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday signed by her attorney and Black’s attorney.
That memo means Pierson can’t reinstate her legal claims against billionaire investor Black in connection with the alleged assault at Epstein’s Upper East Side residence in 2002.
It also means that Black did not make a payment to settle the case.
Black had denied Pierson’s allegation, filed in November 2022, that he raped her in a suite at Epstein’s mansion, where she had gone “believing that she would massage Black and receive the promised money in return.” . in her complaint.
Black, in a statement provided to CNBC on Monday, said: “I have never met Ms. Pearson. I have no further comment.”
Black’s attorney, Danya Perry, said in a statement: “This matter has been dismissed with prejudice. I will have no further comment.”
A spokeswoman for Wigdor LLP, the law firm that had represented Pierson, said: “We have no comment at this time.”
Black agreed in January 2023 to pay $62.5 million to the US Virgin Islands to drop any claims related to the territory’s investigation into Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation there.
Two years earlier, Apollo Global Management revealed that then-CEO Black had paid Epstein $158 million for financial advice from 2012 to 2017, despite knowing that Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex against fee from and minor girl in Florida.
Black left Apollo in March 2021, months earlier than he had previously said he would.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in August 2019 at a federal prison in Manhattan, a month after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
Black in a letter Saturday separately withdrew his appeal of a judge’s decision in Pierson’s case denying his motion for sanctions against Wigdor.
Black had argued in that motion that Wigdor had “repeatedly abused the court system to wash away frivolous, baseless and damaging allegations of sexual assault against Black in two lawsuits.”
The Wigdor law firm is continuing a separate lawsuit against Black that its lawyers filed in July, alleging that he raped a then-16-year-old autistic girl at Epstein’s Manhattan home in 2002.
Another attorney for Black said last year that he had never met the accuser, a woman in her 30s identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe in depositions in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
That lawyer, Susan Estrich, said at the time: “These vicious and defamatory lies, masquerading as allegations, have been deliberately fabricated by the Wigdor law firm as part of the firm’s vendetta against Mr. Black for vigorously and successfully defending himself in the past. two years,” Estrich said.
A third lawsuit against Black, filed by a woman named Guzel Ganieva, was dismissed by a Manhattan Supreme Court judge last May.
Ganieva had claimed Black defamed her by claiming she had been blackmailing him for many years after they had what she said was a “consensual affair”. Ganieva’s lawsuit claimed she was a “predator” who “sexually harassed and abused” her for years.
In dismissing her lawsuit, Judge David Cohen cited the fact that Ganieva had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Black, who paid her about $9.5 million after she signed the NDA.
That agreement released Black from “all matters, causes of action, claims, suits … arising before the signing of this Agreement … or at any time in the future after the signing of this Agreement,” his release noted Cohen.
Ganieva appealed the dismissal of her lawsuit.
Wigdor initially represented Ganieva in a lawsuit against Black, but fired the firm before the case was dismissed.
In August, Black sued Wigdor and Ganieva in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleging malicious prosecution. That lawsuit, which is pending, also mentions Wigdor’s lawsuits against Black on behalf of Jane Doe and Pierson.
Wigdor and Ganieva moved to dismiss the complaint.