Author’s trick backfires on her

San Francisco author Laura Albert must pay nearly $350,000 in legal fees, triple the amount a jury said she owed a production company for duping it with a novel purportedly written by a male prostitute named JT LeRoy, a judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Kaplan said in an order this week that 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.

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.

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.