Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has fired back against accusations that the firm and a key partner helped orchestrate an alleged fraud at the bankrupt company Thornburg Mortgage, court records show. Orrick and partner Karen Dempsey filed a motion late Monday to dismiss a suit that Thornburg’s bankruptcy trustee filed accusing Dempsey of helping Thornburg executives siphon millions from their own company. Dempsey is Thornburg’s longtime counsel and also served as the company’s assistant secretary, according to the trustee’s original complaint.
The case is enormously complex and involves allegations of misappropriated money, stolen laptops, missing company information and a group of law firms that backed out of representing Thornburg because they were uncomfortable with the company’s requests. But Orrick, Dempsey and their attorneys at Howard Rice and DLA Piper claim in their motion that Dempsey and the firm did nothing wrong and were not aware of any fraud.
