Page 1
State Bar Hires Law Firm to Probe Girardi’s Influence
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The State Bar of California’s Board of Trustees declared yesterday that it will intensify its efforts to determine whether disciplinary action against the once-affluent Tom Girardi was averted by virtue of influence and connections he had within the State Bar.
On Jan. 10, the State Bar recommended to the California Supreme Court that Girardi be disbarred—a development that came as no surprise given that the ex-practitioner, who is under a conservatorship, did not file opposition. Chief among the findings was that Girardi “committed an act of moral turpitude…by intentionally misappropriating $1,985,615.15” that belonged to the minor children of air crash victims.
Questions have been raised as to why Girardi was able to avert discipline though the years, other than incurring a private reproval in 1999. Answers to the questions will be sought by the downtown Los Angeles law firm of Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP, hired to conduct the probe.
Board Chair’s Statement
State Bar Board of Trustees Chair Ruben Duran, who heads Best Best & Krieger LLP’s Ontario office, said yesterday:
“The State Bar Board leadership and staff take very seriously the immense harm done by Thomas Girardi to innocent victims. We have been proactively doing everything in our power to learn from the past and do better in the future to prevent harms like this from recurring.
“This necessarily includes assessing whether intentional wrongdoing by anyone associated with the State Bar may have influenced how complaints against Girardi were handled. Details of the investigation, including details of past closed complaints and investigations, must remain confidential to comply with the law and to give this investigation the greatest chance of success.”
He added:
“Mark our words: we will go wherever the evidence leads us.”
State Bar Investigator
Inevitably, the evidence will lead to Tom Layton who, while an investigator for the State Bar, acted as a personal assistant to Girardi, frequently accompanying the high-profile lawyer at social events.
The spotlight is also apt to be shone on Howard Miller, once a member of Girardi’s law firm. Alex Kozinski, while chief judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (now retired from the court), accused Girardi, Miller and others of misconduct in connection with efforts to levy execution on a $489 million judgment against Dole Food Company. That company had not been named as the defendant but court documents were altered to make it appear that it had been.
A three-judge panel on July 13, 2010 determined that Girardi and attorney Walter Lack had committed flagrant ethical breaches, saying:
“In a high stakes gamble to enforce a foreign Judgment of nearly a half billion dollars, Respondents initiated and directed years of litigation against Defendants. Respondents efforts went beyond the use of ‘questionable tactics’—they crossed the line to include the persistent use of known falsehoods….Respondents made these false representations knowingly, intentionally, and recklessly. Their actions vexatiously multiplied the proceedings at great expense to Defendants and required the Ninth Circuit to deal with a frivolous appeal.”
No Discipline
The judges ordered that Girardi and Lack report the matter to the State Bar. No disciplinary action ensued.
The State Bar farmed out the investigation because Miller was, at the time, State Bar president. Girardi and Lack were exonerated—but it was later revealed that the special prosecutor who cleared them, Jerome Falk, had ties to Girardi and Lack; their law firms had been clients of his law firm.
Falk proclaimed that no conduct on the part of the lawyers had been “intentional”—contradicting statements by Kozkinski, a finding in a report by Ninth Circuit Senior Judge A. Wallace Tashima, and the conclusion reached by the three-judge panel, comprised of Judges William A. Fletcher, Marsha S. Berzon, and N. Randy Smith.
Girardi’s erstwhile firm, Girardi | Keese is in bankruptcy, as is Girardi, and his wife, singer Erika Jayne, is suing him for a dissolution of marriage. The former practitioner, 82, is said to have Alzheimer’s disease.
Copyright 2022, Metropolitan News Company