(Bloomberg) -- Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite fighting sex-trafficking charges, won a rare court victory Wednesday -- a judge ordered one of her accusers to pay her $13.70 to cover litigation expenses.
Maxwell, 59, has been in a federal lockup in Brooklyn, New York, since her arrest last year, accused of helping her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein procure girls. She is also alleged to have participated in some of the sexual abuse. Maxwell is fighting the charges and is scheduled to go on trial in November.
A woman who filed suit last year using a pseudonym “Jane Doe” claimed Maxwell acted like “an older sister” to her when she was just 13 -- taking her to movies and shopping -- while grooming her to be sexually abused by Epstein and ultimately raped by him at age 17. Doe dropped the case after joining a settlement that offered a victims' compensation fund set up by Epstein's estate.
Maxwell, through her lawyer, Laura Menninger, then seized on a provision in the law that allows the “prevailing party” to be reimbursed for costs other than attorney fees when a case is voluntarily dismissed. Maxwell submitted a bill for $5 in court docketing fees and $8.70 in “other costs” that appears to be what the federal court system charged her for reading documents online at 10 cents a page.
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