It isn’t just E.L. James raking in all of that Fifty Shades of Grey dough. Jennifer Pedroza, an elementary schoolteacher from Fort Worth, Texas, just won $11.5 million due to a lawsuit she filed against Amanda Hayward, her former business partner. The two women worked for the Writer’s Coffee Shop, which initially published the digital version of James’s best-selling erotica series, Fifty Shades of Grey.
According to The Guardian, Judge Susan McCoy ruled that Pedroza had been defrauded of royalties from the books, which made the business at least $40 million. Pedroza claimed Hayward was guilty of “greed and self-dealing” and conned her out of her rightful funds, along with other women involved with the Writer’s Coffee Shop. The Australian-based publisher produced Fifty Shades of Grey as an e-book and print-on-demand book in 2010. It sold 250,000 copies before Random House made a deal with the company to publish the series.