NEW YORK, Could 12 (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) on Friday requested a federal decide to disclaim class-action standing to greater than 100 ladies who mentioned the financial institution helped allow the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse them.
In a submitting in Manhattan federal court docket, the biggest U.S. financial institution mentioned Epstein’s accusers had too many variations to sue beneath an “oversimplified” principle that it was liable to all of them by having supplied Epstein with banking providers.
JPMorgan mentioned permitting a category motion “skips over” how Epstein’s conduct “various from sufferer to sufferer, and throughout time,” and that the financial institution’s data on the time and provision of banking providers equally various.
The query “isn’t whether or not Epstein’s conduct was monstrous. It was,” JPMorgan mentioned. “The query earlier than the court docket is whether or not to certify a category on this lawsuit. It mustn’t.”
Legal professionals for the accusers didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Class actions let plaintiffs sue as a bunch, probably permitting higher recoveries at decrease prices than in the event that they had been pressured to sue individually.
Epstein was a JPMorgan shopper from 1998 to 2013.
He was additionally a Deutsche Financial institution AG (DBKGn.DE) shopper from 2013 to 2018, which faces a separate proposed class motion by Epstein’s accusers.
In each lawsuits, the accusers have known as the banks “Epstein’s secret weapon” that made his years of sexual abuse and trafficking doable.
Each circumstances are scheduled for trial later this 12 months. The banks have denied wrongdoing.
Epstein died in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell whereas awaiting trial for intercourse trafficking, in what New York Metropolis’s health worker known as a suicide.
The circumstances within the U.S. District Courtroom, Southern District of New York, are Jane Doe 1 v Deutsche Financial institution AG et al, No. 22-10018, and Jane Doe 1 v JPMorgan Chase Financial institution NA, No. 22-10019.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York
Modifying by Shri Navaratnam
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