WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CN) - High-profile attorney Marc Kasowitz is demanding “extreme sanctions” against opposing counsel in a Palm Beach case over vicious hate mail that accused a Kasowitz client of sexually assaulting a child.
The rancor keeps mounting in the long-running case in which Kasowitz client Harold Peerenboom claims Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac Perlmutter initiated a shocking hate mail campaign during a neighborhood dispute in their beachside community.
Now widely known for his role as President Donald Trump's personal counsel in the Russian campaign meddling investigation, Kasowitz has been representing Peerenboom in the hate mail lawsuit since 2013.
He and Peerenboom want the court to strike Perlmutter's counterclaims and hold the Marvel chairman and his attorneys liable for Peerenboom’s legal fees in light of an “incontrovertible record of their confessed wrongful conduct and pattern of misrepresentations to this Court,” the filing states.
The demand for sanctions was submitted in response to Perlmutter's recent motion, which said Kasowitz's firm potentially suppressed evidence that a disgruntled former employee of Peerenboom's company was the one responsible for the hate mail.
The Perlmutter motion made a dizzying accusation: that Peerenboom acted "in parallel" with the former employee to frame Perlmutter and Perlmutter's wife for the hate mail.
Peerenboom was "likely complicit — or at least indifferent" to the hate mail as he was bent on blaming it on Perlmutter and extracting defamation damages from the Marvel mogul, according to the motion.
The motion assails Kasowitz directly: "Based on the course of these proceedings to date, it appears that Peerenboom's propensity for misrepresentation has infected his counsel, Kasowitz."
In his demand for sanctions, Peerenboom counters that "it does not come close to being plausible" that he would incur massive legal bills and subject himself to over-the-top defamatory letters as part of some "moronic and self-defeating scheme" to shakedown the Perlmutters.
As for the allegations against Kasowitz, the filing says that there is "no basis ... to assert that a reputable, long-established law firm is so desperate for money that members of the firm entered into a lunatic criminal conspiracy to extort the multi-billionaire Perlmutter."
The hate mail at the center of the case was ruthless by all accounts. It contained unsubstantiated claims that Peerenboom had sexually assaulted a child and was involved in a double murder plot.
Sent to Peerenboom's business associates, neighbors and others, the letters began appearing around the time of a dispute over the tennis center in Peerenboom and Perlmutter's upscale Palm Beach community of Sloan’s Curve. Peerenboom challenged the community’s retaining of a tennis center manager supported by Perlmutter, sparking a neighborhood controversy that angered the Marvel chairman to the point where he initiated the hate mail campaign, Peerenboom alleges.
While he denies involvement with the extreme defamatory letters, Perlmutter recently conceded that he sent out to various friends and neighbors a set of newspaper articles including coverage of Canadian political controversy surrounding Peerenboom and his past position with the Toronto Harbour Commission. Perlmutter says he let the articles speak for themselves, and did not add any negative commentary.
The Perlmutter motion alleges that these "innocuous mailings" gave Peerenboom and/or his former employee the idea to frame Perlmutter for a hate mail attack.