This latest lawsuit brought by two pension funds that owned shares of JP Morgan Chase names both Dimon and Staley as defendants, as well as current and former members of JPMorgan Chase’s Board of Directors. It has been brought by a prominent class action law firm on behalf of shareholders of the bank. The lawsuit’s theory of the case is that specific members of the Board of JPMorgan Chase “put their heads in the sand” and ignored that the bank had become a cash conduit for Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring because they were hoping that their own business ties to Epstein “would go unnoticed.” (We might add an attendant thesis: that Dimon takes very good care of his Board in return for them taking very good care of him.)
A current member of the JPMorgan Chase Board at the time of the filing of the lawsuit who is alleged to have had business ties to Epstein, James S. Crown, will not be able to be deposed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. He died in a single car accident on a private race track 16 days ago, at age 70 – after serving on JPMorgan Chase’s Board and those of two of its predecessor banks for 32 consecutive years.