Zing Muse – Billionaire Jeff Bezos and his newlywed wife Lauren Sánchez have filed a petition in a California Superior Court, requesting that Sánchez’s half-brother, Michael Sánchez, pay $190,556 in legal fees related to their ongoing legal battle.
According to court documents filed on July 28, the couple is seeking $182,374 in attorney’s fees plus $8,182 in additional costs. Under California’s Anti-SLAPP law, the court may dismiss unfounded claims early and require the plaintiff to cover the defendant’s legal costs.
Michael’s lawyer has called the lawsuit “a years-long campaign of harassment aimed at extracting a wholly unjustified settlement”. Attorney fees in the case have reportedly ranged between $549 and $1,125 per hour.
The family feud began in 2019, following Bezos’s divorce from Mackenzie Scott and his relationship with Sánchez, who at the time was still separated but not yet divorced from her husband, talent manager Patrick Whitesell. The half-brother is accused of leaking private “selfie” photos of the couple to the media—a claim he denies.
The New York Times reported that in 2018, Michael Sánchez and American Media had signed a nondisclosure agreement concerning certain intimate information, images, and messages between Bezos and Sánchez.
In February 2020, Michael filed a defamation lawsuit against Bezos. A Los Angeles Superior Court ruled in Bezos’s favor in November of that year, but the litigation continued. In 2021, Bezos was awarded $218,385 in legal fees; the dispute remains unresolved.
The couple’s recent wedding, held in June on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, reportedly cost around $50 million and was attended by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Orlando Bloom, Usher, Sydney Sweeney, and Ivanka Trump. Following the ceremony, the couple has been seen at various European events, including parties in Ibiza aboard Bezos’s $500 million superyacht, Koru.
Linda (News)
