Writer Facing Fraud Trial for Creating Fake Persona

In the trial of an unusual literary fraud case, the writer formerly known as “JT Leroy” is defending herself from allegations that she duped a film company into believing her pseudonym was “a real human being.”

Antidote International Films optioned the movie rights to JT Leroy's novel “Sarah,” but alleges it didn't get what it bargained for –- the author's “semi-autobiographical” story of a boy growing up in the sordid world of truck-stop prostitution. Media reports exposed JT Leroy as Laura Albert, a struggling New York writer whose mother did not turn tricks for truckers.

“Defendants' representations regarding JT Leroy's identity and biography ... were lies,” Antidote, which paid $45,000 for a three-year option, said in a complaint filed in August 2006 against Albert and her company Underdogs Inc.

The trial of the case began last week in Manhattan federal court, with Albert claiming she cannot be held liable for attributing her work to an alter ego. “Using a nom-de-plume is protected artistic expression, not actionable artifice,” she argued in a court brief.

Authors from George Eliot to Lewis Carroll, of course, have used pseudonyms. But the case is really about whether Albert, as Antidote puts it, “led people to believe that 'J. T. LeRoy' existed and was a real human being.”

The alleged deception involved having Albert's sister-in-law, clad in black hat and blonde wig, appear as the androgynous JT Leroy at public events with Albert by her side as JT's keeper “Speedie.” Underdogs also allegedly provided Antidote with a fake W-9 tax form signed by “J. T. Leroy” and

contrived for [Antidote's president] to meet "J. T. Leroy" in person at a party in 2003 at [director] Steven Shainberg's apartment in New York.

Albert's lawyer has told the jury that she was physically and sexually abused as a child and developed her alter ego while posing as a teenage boy in therapy. JT Leroy was her “bridge to the world,” Eric Weinstein explained.

But Antidote insists Albert cannot claim she was unaware of any deception. “Ms. Albert knows who she is,” it said in a brief. “Laura Albert certainly has known ... that she is not, in fact, a young male transvestite former homeless prostitute named 'J. T. Leroy.'”

A less cerebral defense argument is that Antidote optioned only the fictional novel “Sarah,” not the rights to the life-story of its supposed author.

“Now, Antidote confesses that they planned to weave elements of JT Leroy’s supposed, real-life story into the fantastical world of Sarah,” Weinstein has said. “But their creative concept outstretched the narrow limits of the option contract.”

The plaintiff could portray that argument as a red herring. “[I]t is beyond dispute that Antidote would not have entered into the Option Agreement with Underdogs if Underdogs had told the truth about the fact that J. T. LeRoy was not, in fact, the 'sole author' of Sarah,” Antidote has argued.

Two other defendants -– Albert's publisher and agent –- were previously dismissed from the case. Antidote is seeking unspecified damages and an order revising the option contract so it has the right to use Albert's biographical information “as replacement for the similar rights granted with respect to 'J.T. Leroy.'”

By Matthew Heller
6/17/07