NYC hires high-profile lawyer to defend Mayor Adams against sexual assault lawsuit

New York City’s Law Department has hired Alex Spiro, a prominent attorney whose clients include Elon Musk and Jay-Z, to defend Mayor Eric Adams in a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a former transit police colleague in 1993, according to a new court filing.

Adams has repeatedly denied the allegations and said he does not recall the accuser, Florida resident Lorna Beach-Mathura. Taxpayers are footing Adams' legal bills in the case under a decision made by the city’s corporation counsel, Sylvia Hinds-Radix.

Spiro charged over $2,000 an hour in a case defending a woman accused of defrauding JPMorgan Chase, Bloomberg Law reported. He is a partner at international law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

A spokesperson for the Law Department, which Hinds-Radix heads, said it sometimes retains outside firms to assist with litigation. The city pays them $250 per hour for partners and $175 per hour for associates, according to the department.

“We retained the firm of Quinn Emanuel to serve as co-counsel to assist us in representing the city and the mayor in this case to ensure the Law Department can maximize its existing resources on our numerous other matters,” spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci said in a statement on Monday.

Calls and emails to Spiro and Quinn Emanuel were not immediately returned

Megan Goddard, an attorney representing Beach-Mathura, declined to comment on Spiro joining the case.

Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer who has brought sexual harassment lawsuits against city employees, said the move appeared highly unusual.

“It’s time for politicians to be held to the same standard as normal working men and women who, when accused of misconduct, have to pay their own lawyers,” Wigdor said.

Spiro has made headlines for winning cases with celebrity and wealthy clients. He is most recently best known for helping Musk with his takeover of Twitter and defending New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft against allegations of soliciting prostitution at a massage parlor in Florida. A New Yorker article last year described Spiro as specializing in “protecting the rich and famous from the consequences of their poorest decisions.”

Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at Columbia University, said the mayor “wants to convey the message that he will aggressively litigate” Beach-Mathura’s civil complaint, which she filed in November under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. That law opened a one-year window for people to bring sexual misconduct cases in civil court past the usual statute of limitations.

Beach-Mathura said Adams had promised to help her get a promotion within the NYPD, where they both worked three decades ago, after she was repeatedly passed over for one. In a court filing last month, she alleged Adams demanded oral sex in a parking lot and forced her to touch his penis after she refused to comply.

The mayor has adamantly denied her claims. “This did not happen,” he said during a press conference last month.

Hinds-Radix said the mayor was entitled to representation by the city because he was a transit officer at the time of the alleged incident. She denied the mayor was receiving any “special treatment.”

Charles Lane contributed reporting.