Macpherson is accused of taking part in a “conspiracy” to cover up claims that her billionaire husband, Jeff Soffer, was piloting a helicopter without a license when it crashed during an attempted landing on November 22, 2012, at the exclusive Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club on Great Guana Cay in The Bahamas and killed his best friend, Lance Valdez.
The suit was filed against Soffer, a hotel and property tycoon, by Valdez’s widow, Daria Valdez, in Miami.
The suit claims that Soffer, the owner of Miami’s famed Fontainebleau hotel, was “recklessly flying and controlling” the helicopter “without a valid helicopter pilot’s license” when it crashed.
Soffer and four other passengers survived with injuries but Lance Valdez, a successful international tax attorney based in the Bahamas, died.
The lawsuit further contends that it was actually Soffer who was at the controls of the helicopter, not a pilot who was also on board. Just before the crash, it says that Soffer flew low over a golf course to show off his house and yacht to passengers before hitting wind turbulence as he tried to land and that he made immediate arrangements to flee the island while his friend’s lifeless body lay in the wreckage, the suit claims.
Valdez, a Mexican citizen born, was one of Soffer’s oldest friends and reportedly introduced the Miami hotelier to Macpherson when the Australian was based in London.
The couple broke up earlier in 2012 but they reconciled as he recovered from the crash and married in Fiji this July at a luxury resort.
Macpherson is alleged to have taken part in the cover-up by making calls to a mutual friend of both couples called Charles Holzer, whose mother “Baby Jane” Holzer was one of Andy Warhol’s muses.
The calls related to Mrs. Valdez to sign a release stating that she would not take legal action against anyone else aboard the helicopter in response for accepting a $2 million insurance payment.
According to the lawsuit, “Soffer induced … Elle Macpherson to call Charles Holzer … and told him that Soffer was annoyed about Daria’s delay in signing the release, telling Holzer that ‘Soffer doesn’t have to do this you know.'”
The lawsuit names Soffer, his chief operating officer and two other employees as defendants in the alleged conspiracy.
Representatives for Miss Macpherson have declined to comment about the lawsuit while Soffer’s attorney says his client denied all allegation of wrong doing in the Bahamas crash and will present his defense in court.
Mr. Valdez is survived by his two daughters Sasha, (9) and Natalya, (7), and his son Lance Jr. (2).
