JT LeRoy creator
told to pay triple legal fees

Author Laura Albert must pay nearly $350,000 in legal fees, triple the amount a jury said she owes a production company for duping it with a novel supposedly based on the life of a prostitute named JT LeRoy, a judge has ruled.

U.S. district judge Jed S. Kaplan said in an order Monday it was reasonable for Albert and her company, Underdogs Inc., to pay legal fees that are triple the $116,500 that a jury in June found she owes Antidote International Films Inc.

Lawyers for Antidote had asked for $850,000 in fees and $214,000 in expenses. The judge awarded the Antidote lawyers $279,175 in fees and $70,325 in expenses, totaling $349,500.

A lawyer for Albert did not immediately respond to a call for comment Tuesday.

Albert had testified at her trial that she was LeRoy, who was promoted as the male author of Sarah, the tale of a truck stop prostitute that was marketed as being based on his life. The jury ordered $110,000 paid to Antidote and $6,500 in punitive damages.

An Antidote executive had testified during the trial that he did not learn until 2006, six years after Sarah was published, that LeRoy was a fictitious character.

Albert had testified she objected to people calling LeRoy a hoax, saying she did telephone interviews with reporters under that name because she believed he was inside her.

According to trial testimony, Albert's friends donned wigs and posed as LeRoy at book signings and duped journalists with the phony back story about truck stop sex. (AP)