Sentencing hearing vacated for ex-legal heavyweight Tom Girardi

By FRED SHUSTER, City News Service

The judge presiding over the trial of convicted former attorney Tom Girardi has canceled Friday’s sentencing hearing and will hold a status conference in its place to schedule a psychological examination to determine if hospitalization rather than prison is appropriate for the 85-year-old defendant, who suffers from cognitive impairment.

U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton granted the defense motion to explore whether Girardi’s symptoms of mental decline rise to the degree where hospitalization is more suitable than a prison cell. Federal prosecutors, however, recommend “a significant custodial sentence” at a Bureau of Prisons correctional facility that offers appropriate health services, if warranted.

The government argues that there is no reasonable cause to believe that Girardi’s current mental condition requires hospitalization, prosecutors wrote in supplemental sentencing papers filed Wednesday.

“The parties, and the court, agree that defendant shows some signs of cognitive impairment,” according to the document lodged in Los Angeles federal court. “However, the court on numerous occasions noted that defendant has exhibited signs of malingering and has shown the ability to engage in sophisticated conduct designed to exaggerate the symptoms of mental decline for his own benefit. As a result of this malingering, it is difficult to accurately determine defendant’s true level of impairment.”

Girardi has been housed in the secure memory care section of an assisted living facility in Orange County, as opposed to a hospital, since June 2022, prosecutors said.

In previous papers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office asked that Girardi be sentenced to 14 years behind bars for stealing $15 million from his injured clients in a long-running and complex Ponzi scheme. The defense countered that the disbarred lawyer is a “broke, half-blind, incontinent, 85-year-old man with dementia” who should instead be placed in a locked medical facility for the rest of his life.

Once ranked among the most successful and prominent lawyers in the country, Girardi was previously scheduled to be sentenced in downtown Los Angeles on Friday following convictions on four counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors contend Girardi stole millions from clients and spent the money on private jets, golf club memberships, jewelry and the career of his now-estranged wife, “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne.

Prosecutors also ask that Girardi be ordered to pay almost $3.8 million in restitution for perpetrating “a cunning fraud scheme against the injured clients he had a sworn duty to protect.”

Girardi’s “yearslong theft of client funds from his law firm’s trust accounts and the myriad lies he told to cover up his theft represent a calculated and devastating betrayal of the very people that turned to him for help in their darkest hour,” prosecutors wrote.

Formerly known as a defender of the powerless in class-action lawsuits against corporations, Girardi represented plaintiffs in a number of high-profile cases, including Bryan Stow’s civil suit against Major League Baseball. Stow was the San Francisco Giants fan who sustained severe injuries during an attack in a Dodger Stadium parking lot.

Girardi also represented plaintiffs in the toxic groundwater case against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. that was dramatized in the Oscar award-winning 2000 Julia Roberts movie “Erin Brockovich.”

But that version of Girardi no longer exists, his attorneys say.

“He has lost everything, from his possessions, to his reputation, to his mind,” defense papers say. “He spends his days in a lockdown memory-care facility where he occupies a shared room and requires round-the-clock assistance for basic tasks. He has to be tricked into taking a shower on the pretense of going to court, and spends his time writing pages of notes about imaginary legal cases and clients that do not exist. He does not recall the trial or the verdict in this matter.”

Girardi’s lawyers argue that a custodial sentence is not necessary because their client is an octogenarian first-time offender convicted of nonviolent crimes who poses no ongoing or future threat to society.

The well-publicized criminal trial, the collapse of his Girardi Keese law firm, and the State Bar’s response has left Girardi “a penniless pariah” and a “cautionary tale for lawyers nationwide,” his attorneys wrote.

“A sentence of lifetime confinement to a medical facility would be sufficient,” the defense wrote, asking the judge to decline to apply federal sentencing guidelines.

Girardi was convicted in August of running the massive 10-year scheme in which prosecutors said he siphoned at least $15 million in settlement funds from four of his clients. Girardi showed no visible reaction as the verdicts were read in Los Angeles federal court. He suffers from some degree of dementia by all accounts but was deemed able to assist in his own defense during the trial, and he even testified.

The wire fraud counts corresponded to four victims, some of whom had suffered serious injuries in accidents, whose settlement funds were pilfered by the disgraced ex-attorney. They are: Joe Ruigomez, who suffered burns on most of his body when a gas line exploded, killing his girlfriend; Judy Selberg, whose husband was killed in a boating calamity; Josefina Hernandez, who was injured by a faulty medical device; and Erika Saldana, whose 1-year-old baby was badly injured in a car crash with a drunk driver. The baby later died.

Girardi was the final witness called by his lawyers to testify at the trial, claiming that “every client got every penny that every client was supposed to get.”

The defendant blamed his firm’s former chief accountant, Chris Kamon, for the missing money. From the witness stand, Girardi said Kamon “was pretty clever in stealing millions of dollars.”

Kamon, 51, formerly of Encino and Palos Verdes and who was living in the Bahamas at the time of his November 2022 arrest, pleaded guilty in October to two wire fraud counts for enabling the embezzlement of tens of millions of dollars from the firm’s clients and for embezzling money from Girardi Keese itself.

Kamon faces sentencing Jan. 31.

Girardi, Kamon and David R. Lira, Girardi’s son-in-law and a former lawyer at Girardi Keese, face similar federal fraud allegations in Chicago.

Earlier this year, after several days of hearings, Girardi was found competent to stand trial despite his claim that he has Alzheimer’s disease and was incapable of assisting his lawyers. He was allowed to go free on $250,000 bond.

Girardi’s estranged actress wife filed for divorce in November 2020 after a 21-year marriage. Following the split, the couple listed their Pasadena home for sale at a price of $13 million. Jayne has not been charged in the case against her husband.

After Girardi was disbarred in 2022, the State Bar of California reported it had received 205 complaints against him alleging he misappropriated settlement money, abandoned clients or committed other serious ethical violations over the course of his four-decade career.

Girardi Keese collapsed in late 2020 after Girardi was accused in a lawsuit of embezzling money meant for clients the firm was representing in litigation over an airplane crash in Indonesia.

Girardi is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, as is the now-shuttered Wilshire Boulevard law firm that bore his name and that faces more than $500 million in claims.