A New York City building owner is trying to escape paying a hefty $35 million judgment to a former JPMorgan banker who claimed a shattered glass door left her with permanent brain damage, according to new court documents.
Lawyers for the Madison Avenue building claim that hours of new video surveillance of former banking analyst Megan Brown, captured over a nine-month period, has revealed that her claims of incapacity are a “scam.”
“Rarely has a farce of this magnitude been so orchestrated before [Brown] “This image was captured on video and in court documents,” wrote Christopher Theobalt, an attorney for 271 Madison — who says the $35.2 million judgment should now be vacated.
But Brown’s lawyer, Tom Moore, called the move “absolute desperation.”
“Hope springs eternal,” Moore, who originally demanded $80 million, told The Washington Post. But for the defendants, those hopes will soon be dashed.
In March 2024, a jury found that the owners of 271 Madison Ave. They are responsible for the horrific 2015 incident in which a 7-foot-tall lobby door apparently exploded as Brown, then 27, walked through it.
Brown, who now runs a gelato company in Naples, Florida, told the jury that the injuries ultimately led to her being fired from her position as a senior analyst and negatively affected her ability to carry out daily tasks.
“Well, one of the biggest problems I have with my mind is that I can’t trust it,” she testified during the three-week trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Jurors unanimously ruled in her favor, finding that the negligence of the owner of 271 Madison was a “substantial factor in causing” her injuries, The Post previously reported.
But the building owners appealed the ruling, hiring private eyes to track down Brown in the Sunshine State, and took photos of her that “depict a level of function that cannot be reconciled with what [she] described at trial,” according to court documents.
The footage showed Brown dodging traffic, working 10-hour shifts at an ice cream shop, texting while riding a tricycle without a helmet and grocery shopping — activities she “insisted were outside of her control,” the suit alleges.
One video depicts Brown working under “harsh” fluorescent lighting in her warehouse at night, which contradicts her courtroom testimony that the fluorescent lights “stress me out in ways like I’m going to need a nap… I’m in pain,” the attorneys claimed.
Investigators found Brown running the “soup to nuts” gelato shop, including setting up and working solo for a three-hour golf course event — even pushing a large gelato cart into a pickup truck while the event was wrapping up, according to the filing.
During the trial, Brown testified that she had “a team of subordinates at her disposal to perform virtually every business task,” as the building’s attorneys noted.
“This evidence should put to rest the narrative that Plaintiff is merely an uninvolved cog in a ‘part-time ice cream business, or, as she puts it, a ‘lemonade stand,’” the motion states.
“If this is her fate, she didn’t get the memo.”
But Brown’s lawyer claimed they were “open and clear” during the trial, and that some of her pain, such as needing an aide or a helmet to get out, was not “a constant thing.”
“Guess what? At the time of the trial, she was walking to court every day with nothing [assistance]in full view [the] “Jury. This has absolutely no basis in fact,” Moore said.
“She is admirable for her perseverance,” Moore said. “And now she’s under fire for running a gelato stand that keeps the wolf away from the door. What is she supposed to do — turn to public assistance? She’s trying her best.”
The building’s lawyers also claimed that Brown lied about why she was fired from JPMorgan, and that it was not due to performance problems caused by her brain injuries as she testified.
During a separate federal arbitration case against the bank, Brown swore under oath that her termination was actually retaliation over a pay dispute, according to court documents cited by the building’s attorneys.
“Telling two conflicting stories before two courts under oath and prevailing over both constitutes perjury,” the motion said, criticizing the ruling as ill-gotten “wealth.”
Moore denied the discrepancy, claiming the dismissal was due to a “political dispute”, and adding that “not a penny” of the jury’s award was due to loss of future earnings.
“This is a broken life,” he said [is] “Life will never come together again as it was before 2015.”