V.I. Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett has filed notice that she will seek sanctions against the attorney representing six victims of Jeffrey Epstein in a lawsuit naming her, the V.I. government and other territory officials, saying the claims against her amount to “outright untruth, fiction, and misrepresentation.”
Plaskett said attorney Jordan K. Merson of Merson Law persisted in the “frivolous legal claims” even after her counsel contacted him in March, after the first amended complaint was filed, to warn that should he continue to press the complaint, the congresswoman would proceed to serve and then file a Rule 11 motion, which is used to address abusive or unfounded court filings.
According to the notice, filed Friday in District Court for the Southern District of New York where the case is being heard, Merson indicated he would consider withdrawing the allegations against Plaskett if given access to her deposition in the V.I. government’s complaint against J.P. Morgan Chase, Epstein’s bank, which was settled for $75 million in September. (Merson has been stymied in his efforts to get documents in that case that were filed under protective order. Last month, Judge Jed Rakoff denied his request.)
However, before the issue with Plaskett was resolved, Merson filed a second amended complaint, or SAC, in May that reiterated “many of the factual misstatements and frivolous legal claims from the First Amended Complaint, even after being advised they were baseless and probably sanctionable. Counsel went further and added an equally deficient and inflammatory RICO allegation,” according to Plaskett’s notice to the court.
“Rather than wait to review the deposition of Congresswoman Plaskett and potentially withdraw the complaint, Plaintiffs doubled down with the SAC. The SAC took the allegations from speculative into pure fantasy. Recognizing that the First Amended Complaint contained no facts supporting the claims against the Congresswoman, it appears Plaintiffs’ counsel made the decision to simply make facts up. Many of these ‘facts’ are directly controverted by law, regulation, or even a simple internet search,” the notice states.
The lawsuit by Jane Does 1-6 alleges negligence and violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, claiming territory officials actively conspired with Epstein to perpetuate his sex-trafficking scheme for their own gain.
Also named in the complaint in both their professional and personal capacities are former First Lady Cecile de Jongh, former Senators Celestino White and Carlton Dowe, who now heads the V.I. Port Authority, former Attorney General Vincent Frazer, and former Governors Kenneth Mapp and John de Jongh Jr. All have denied wrongdoing, and all have sought to have the complaint dismissed. In its latest filing on Wednesday, the V.I. Justice Department said the “allegations and lawsuit have no merit.”
“These are not errors of an inexperienced attorney. Counsel here holds themselves out as very experienced and well regarded. Mr. Merson advertises himself as ‘one of the top lawyers in New York and the United States,’” Plaskett’s notice states. “According to the Merson Law website, Mr. Merson was named a top 100 lawyer in New York in 2024, was recognized as one of the top 200 lawyers in America by Forbes, and was selected for the New York Law Journal’s ‘Hall of Fame’ in 2014. Mr. Merson appears on at least 39 cases in Pacer in this court alone,” it says, referencing the electronic docket system for U.S. district and appellate courts.
“In this case, however, Mr. Merson and his colleagues disregarded their obligations as officers of the court. Perhaps they believed including the Congresswoman in their complaint would garner publicity, or that some defendants would put pressure on other defendants to settle quickly,” the notice states. “Perhaps they just wish to wound for some unknown insidious purpose. Certainly, the fact that they are using their clients as a conduit in that effort is reprehensible” and warrants “substantial sanctions,” it says, while stressing Plaskett’s support for victims of human trafficking.
Among the allegations against Plaskett in the second amended complaint are that she took “regular and routine payments” from Epstein, “disguised as campaign contributions”; that he held a fundraiser for her; that she recommended tax incentives for him when she was counsel for the V.I. Economic Development Authority; and that she “entered into agreement [sic] with Epstein … to facilitate the sex trafficking venture … to ensure Epstein’s clients co-conspirators, and co-defendants … had access to victims and Plaintiffs,” all of which is false, the notice states.
“Counsel included no facts to support these outrageous claims because they do not exist. No filing, deposition, news article, or any other source of information supports any of these claims. There is no evidence in the public record or anywhere else that Congresswoman Plaskett knew anything about Epstein’s sex trafficking, much less that he asked her to do or that she did anything in furtherance of it,” according to the notice.
The actions are “a dereliction of counsel’s obligations as a lawyer and, frankly, common decency,” it says.
“Counsel made awful claims in the SAC, alleging some of the worst forms of criminality, based on nothing but pure invention. It covered the fatal gaps in the SAC with figments of their imagination and took extreme liberties with the few actual facts they appear to have gleaned from a single source,” the notice states.
“Counsel simply ignored widely known facts that controvert the allegations in the SAC. Doing so not only damages Congresswoman Plaskett but damages the Plaintiffs they have an obligation to represent. They filed the Second Amended Complaint with no regard for the damage their actions could do or their obligations as officers of the Court. It is clear no reasonable inquiry into either the law or the facts was undertaken. Sanctions are warranted,” it says.
Plaskett is represented by Eric R. Breslin of Duane Morris, LLP of New York.
