A New York City building owner is trying to get out of paying an eye-watering $35 million verdict to an ex-JPMorgan banker who claimed a shattering glass door left her with permanent brain damage, according to new court documents.
Lawyers for the Madison Avenue building claim hours of new video surveillance of former banking analyst Meghan Brown taken over a nine-month period reveal her claims of incapacitation are a “fraud.”
“Seldom is a farce of the magnitude orchestrated by [Brown] here captured on video and in court documents,” wrote Christopher Theobalt, attorney for 271 Madison Co — who argue the $35.2 million verdict should now be thrown out.
But Brown’s lawyer Tom Moore called the move “utter desperation.”
“Hope springs eternal,” Moore, who originally argued for an $80 million payout, told The Post. “But for the defendants, those hopes are going to be dashed rather soon.”
In March 2024, a jury found the owners of 271 Madison Ave. liable for the shocking 2015 incident, where a 7½-foot-tall lobby door seemingly exploded as Brown, then 27, was walking through it.
Brown, who now runs a gelato business in Naples, Florida, told jurors the injuries ultimately led to her being fired from her position as a high-level analyst and negatively affected her ability to carry out everyday tasks.
“Well, one of the biggest problems I have with my brain 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 building owner 271 Madison Co.’s negligence was “a substantial factor in causing” her injuries, The Post previously reported.
But the buildings’ owners appealed the verdict, hiring private eyes to track Brown in the Sunshine State, capturing her “depicting a level of function irreconcilable with what [she] described at trial,” according to court docs.
Footage showed Brown dodging traffic, working 10-hour shifts at the gelato shop, texting while operating a trike without a helmet and grocery shopping — activities “she insisted were beyond her,” the filing claims.
One video depicts Brown working under “harsh” fluorescent lighting in her business stockroom at night, clashing with her courtroom testimony that fluorescent lights “exhaust me in ways like I’ll need a nap … I’m in pain,” the lawyers claimed.
Investigators found Brown running the gelato shop “soup to nuts,” including prepping for and working a three-hour golf-course event solo — even pushing the large gelato cart into a van as the event wrapped, according to the filing.
During the trial, Brown had testified that she had a “team of underlings at her disposal to perform virtually every business task,” the building’s lawyers noted.
“This evidence should lay to rest the fable that plaintiff is an uninvolved cog in a ”part-time gelato business, or, as she belittled it, a ‘lemonade stand,’” the motion reads.
“If this is her fate, she has not gotten the memo.”
But Brown’s lawyer claimed they were “open and obvious” during the trial that some of her afflictions, like needing an aide or a helmet to go outside, were not “a constant thing.”
“Guess what? At the time of trial, she walked to the court every day without any [assistance], in full view of [the] jury,” Moore said. “This is totally without foundation in reality.
“She’s to be admired for her tenacity,” Moore said. “And now she’s castigated for running a gelato stand that keeps the wolf away from the door. What’s she supposed to do – go on public assistance? She’s trying to make the best she can.”
The building’s lawyers also claimed that Brown lied about the reason she was fired from JPMorgan, and that it was not due to performance issues stemming from her brain injuries as she had testified.
During a separate federal arbitration case against the bank, Brown swore under oath that her termination was actually retaliation over a wage dispute, according to court documents cited by the building’s attorneys.
“Telling two courts two conflicting stories under oath and prevailing on both is perjury,” the motion argues, slamming the verdict as an ill-gotten “bonanza.”
Moore denied the inconsistency, claiming the firing was over a “policy dispute,” and added that “not one penny” of the jury award was for loss of future earnings.
“This is a life shattered,” he said, “and this [is] a life that will never be put back together as it was prior to 2015.”
