LOS ANGELES — A founder of the Guess clothing empire has accused Lisa Bloom of extortion, saying the prominent attorney threatened to publicize a rape claim that she knew to be false unless the fashion mogul and his company agreed to pay a settlement.
Bloom represented women who had accused Bill Cosby and Bill O’Reilly of sexual misconduct. Now she finds herself a defendant in a lawsuit filed Monday by Paul Marciano’s lawyers in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Bloom, they argued, crossed the line from legal advocacy to extortion by allegedly threatening to publicly brand Marciano a rapist if he did not pay a large amount of money to settle the dispute with an aspiring model.
