The judge in the “JT Leroy” literary fraud case has followed the jury's award of $116,500 in damages by finding that the defendant and her mother, in effect, tried to defraud the court.

"JT Leroy"

A Manhattan jury last week found Laura Albert had crossed the line between literary invention and fraud by duping a film company into believing her JT Leroy pseudonym was a real person. The judgment compensated Antidote International Films for the money it spent developing a movie based on the JT Leroy novel “Sarah.”

In a motion for sanctions, Antidote requested additional damages against Albert for fabricating documents that she filed with the court during the litigation. A forensic expert who examined the documents testified that they had been backdated to appear genuine.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff said “no sanction is appropriate at this time,” but concluded in a post-trial ruling that

it is more likely than not that Laura Albert and [her mother] Carolyn Albert fabricated the documents ... and that both Laura Albert and Carolyn Albert testified falsely at trial regarding when these documents were signed.

Three of the documents, dated Feb. 1, 2001 and March 1, 2001, purported to be the corporate minutes of Laura Albert's company Underdogs, and another, dated Feb 1, 2001, assigned the rights in the literary works of “Jeremy Leroy” to Underdogs.

Both Albert and her mother claimed the documents were authentic, testifying they had been signed on or about the dates appearing on their faces. But in a Feb. 4, 2006 e-mail, Carolyn Albert told her lawyer that Underdogs

must show in the minutes of its annual meeting (backdated, if necessary) that J.T. Leroy is an authorized signatory for contracts.

The forensic expert, moreover, estimated the documents were signed between 2005 and 2007. There was “substantial evidence pointing to fabrication,” Rakoff said, and Albert's testimony had also been undermined by her “repeated history of fabrication.”

In declining to award additional damages, Rakoff cited the defendants' “seemingly limited resources and the fact that the Court is likely to award plaintiff recovery of substantial attorney's fees.” He also said he would not refer the “seeming perjury” of Albert and her mother for further investigation by federal prosecutors.

But the judge “will consider reopening [the sanctions] issue if there is any reversal or modification of the award on appeal.”

Albert testified during the trial that she had assumed male identities to cope with psychological problems caused by her sexual abuse as a child. “I think the evidence was pretty clear that ... this was a commercial deal and not some innocent use of a pseudonym,” says Antidote attorney Gregory L. Curtner (Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone, New York City).

Curtner believes the attorney's fees award could exceed the damages verdict.