Lawyer seeks $3M in damages from ex-boyfriend, for both legal fees and palimony
A Manhattan lawyer is seeking $3 million from a former client, who was also her longtime boyfriend.
Christine Anderson represented Dr. G. Peta Carrera in a 1990 sexual-molestation lawsuit filed against him by a former patient, according to the New York Daily News. Anderson, 70, said she didn’t establish her fees initially, because she and Carrera had been lovers for many years.
She still hasn’t been paid, according to the article, and her Manhattan Supreme Court action seeks $500,000 in unpaid legal fees, $500,000 in palimony and $2 million in punitive damages.
Carrera reportedly put up a Mercedes-Benz and a Park Avenue apartment as collateral for Anderson’s fee, and said that she would get paid when the apartment sold. Anderson said that she agreed to falsely claim that the lien was satisfied, so that he might sell the $2 million apartment in 2011. Anderson alleges that after the sale, Carrera told Anderson the debt was cleared and refused to pay her.
“I trusted him and loved him; and I believed he would honor his word,” Anderson said when asked why she agreed to the arrangement, the paper reports.
Carrera lost the 1990 lawsuit, according the article, and a jury awarded the plaintiff $1.4 million. According to Oliver Koppell, who represented the plaintiff, much of that has not been recovered.
“He played a lot of tricks so he didn’t have to pay,” Koppell told the Daily News.
Carrera reportedly did not return the Daily News’ phone call seeking comment.
