Anna Sorokin’s ex-lawyer is seeking to postpone the $1,000-per-day fine issued against her in a lawsuit filed by the fake heiress — because she’s still in the hospital after collapsing in court during a medical episode last week.
Audrey Thomas slumped to the floor during a Manhattan court hearing Friday in Sorokin’s suit accusing her since-disbarred former attorney of withholding legal records.
“My heart is hurting me! I need an ambulance! … I can’t breathe!” Thomas sobbed before she was wheeled out on a stretcher and taken to the hospital.
The hearing resumed afterward, with Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issuing $1,000 daily fines against Thomas to start accruing on Wednesday — and continuing until she either turned over the remaining court records to Sorokin or explained where they went.
But on Tuesday, Thomas’ lawyer Robert Nir asked the judge to delay the fines from taking effect until March 30, as his client is still in the hospital. Nir also laid out the steps he’d taken to help get the records for Sorokin — aka Anna Delvey, the subject of Netflix’s “Inventing Anna.”
“Thomas remains admitted to the hospital and it is reported that upon being released she will be receiving at a minimum six weeks of daily physical therapy to address the physical deficits that resulted from medical issues she experienced on March 10,” Nir wrote to the judge.
“I submit that in light of my client’s continued hospitalization, it will be impossible for her to take any steps to avoid the $1000 day sanction that this Court imposed on March 10, 2023 which is scheduled to commence on March 15, 2023,” Nir said in court papers that included photos of Thomas in a hospital bed.
Prior to the dramatic courtroom scene, Thomas had asked Engoron to postpone the civil contempt hearing against her, saying she couldn’t represent herself in the case due to health issues. Her attorney couldn’t come to court because of a broken ankle.
Engoron denied the request from Thomas, who told the court she had a spike in her blood pressure since she found out she was at risk of being held in contempt.
Sorokin, 32, filed suit last year, claiming Thomas hadn’t returned audio recordings of her immigration hearings, her Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parole documents, files from her original criminal defense attorney and personal items including headphones and sunglasses.
Sorokin’s lawyer Duncan Levin told Engoron his client has been waiting to receive the records for over a year and she needs them to help fight an appeal of her criminal conviction – for stealing $200,000 from banks and businesses – and to fight her deportation.
The “SoHo Grifter” — who went by the Delvey alias, a German heiress with a 60 million euro fortune — has been on home detention wearing a GPS ankle monitor pending her deportation case. She previously served four years in prison following her criminal conviction in 2019.
“Anna Sorokin has been locked in her apartment for six months now with no movement, waiting on different legal pieces to fall into place,” Sorokin’s rep Juda Engelmayer told The Post.
“This has been going on for too long and just as we need to feel for and care for Ms. Thomas’ medical needs, we are focused on Anna’s need to move on, appeal her conviction and solve her immigration case,” Engelmayer said. “If this was addressed and handled properly when it came up the first several times, neither Ms. Thomas or Ms. Sorokin would be in the situation’s they are in now.”
Nir didn’t return a request for comment Wednesday.