JPMorgan Chase (JPM) called convicted startup founder Charlie Javice’s $73.9M legal-fee tab “unconscionable,” saying her lawyers ran up over $5M for attorneys and staff just to attend her fraud trial, including on days when court was not in session, according to a previously sealed Delaware court filing.
Javice in September was given a seven-year prison sentence for defrauding JPMorgan (JPM) in connection with its $175M acquisition of her fintech company, Frank, four years ago. As part of her sentence, Javice was ordered to reimburse the legal costs paid by JPMorgan, though a full repayment appears unlikely. In March, she was found guilty of misrepresenting the college financial planning website’s user base before its sale to JPMorgan.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan (JPM) is asking the court to block $10.2M in disputed charges and to relieve it of any obligation to cover additional legal expenses going forward. “Public data in comparable high-profile cases demonstrate that Javice’s fees and expenses are inflated and excessive because someone else is paying her bills,” the filing said.
Two of Javice’s trial firms, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, “have already received tens of millions, and seek millions more for patently unreasonable fees and expenses that constitute clear abuse,” JPMorgan argued.
Still, the bank has “largely resolved” the fee dispute with Javice’s other firms, including her lead trial firms, The Baez Law Firm and Ronald Sullivan Law, and her chosen appellate counsel, Shapiro Arato Bach.