Judge orders Rudy Giuliani to pay $1.3 million to former lawyers

A New York judge ordered former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to pay $1.3 million to former lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations over his work for President Trump.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron handed down the ruling on Tuesday in a lawsuit that was filed in 2023 by Giuliani's former lawyer and friend Robert J. Costello, and Costello's former law firm, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, The New York Times reported.

“This is only about collecting a legal fee. There’s no politics,” law firm founder Larry Hutcher said. “We’re obviously very grateful that the court recognized that we were entitled to be paid for the services we rendered.”

Since Giuliani previously filed for bankruptcy over legal bills, it is unclear how much money or assets he has left.

“We’re not going away,” Hutcher also said. “We intend to collect on the debt.”

Giuliani's lawyer, Gary Rosen, said his client would appeal the ruling. Rosen said that Costello had pledged his legal services free of charge to Giuliani. He also noted that Engoron was the judge in Trump’s civil fraud case, and that the significant penalty he levied in that case had recently been overturned by an appeals court.

“Justice Engoron did not permit any opportunity for Mayor Giuliani to defend himself,” Rosen said. “In due time, we believe that Justice Engoron will be reversed by the Appellate Division the same way that the Appellate Division stated that Justice Engoron was wrong regarding President Trump.”

Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman said that the fact that Engoron was presiding over the case “flies in the face of justice, and demonstrates the partisan political nature of this decision.”

Costello defended Giuliani in more than 10 lawsuits, when his license to practice law was challenged in New York and Washington, D.C., and in various criminal investigations related to Giuliani’s work as Trump's personal lawyer.

He broke with Giuliani, saying the former Republican mayor had refused to pay his legal bills, and filed the lawsuit with his firm. In the legal complaint, the firm said that Giuliani had paid only $214,000 of a $1,574,196.10 legal bill.

Giuliani denied having received the invoices and moved to dismiss the lawsuit. However, Engoron said Tuesday that when Costello had texted Giuliani, saying that he owed more than $1 million in legal fees, Giuliani did not question the amount, nor say he had not received the bills.

Engoron ruled that Giuliani’s claim that he had never received the bills had failed, and ordered him to pay $1,360,196.10 plus interest dating from October 2023, the month after he was sued.