Federal judge rules disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi is competent for trial in client fraud case
A former plaintiff's lawyer kingpin, the husband of "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Erika Jayne is accused of stealing millions of dollars from his clients.
A judge on Tuesday ruled disbarred Real Housewives of Beverly Hills lawyer Tom Girardi is competent to stand trial in a federal wire fraud case that accuses him of stealing millions of dollars from clients.
The order from U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton is not publicly available. She has given prosecutors and Girardi’s lawyers five days to identify what in the order they believe should remain sealed.
Judge Staton’s decision clears the way for trial for Girardi, who currently resides at an assisted living center in north Orange County. He’s charged with five counts of wire fraud for allegedly embezzling more than $15 million from five clients between 2010 and 2020.
Chicago attorney Jay Edelson, a former Girardi co-counsel who first reported his possible embezzlement of client funds in late 2020, said the ruling means Girardi “will now have to answer for orchestrating the worst Ponzi scheme in plaintiff’s history.”
“As importantly, it will bring to the forefront a lot of the underbelly of the plaintiff’s bar that STILL has not been cleaned up. This is a good day for the reform wing of the plaintiff’s bar,” Edelson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
A 2010 Barack Obama appointee, Judge Staton heard two days of testimony in August and September from several witnesses, including two experts who assessed Girardi for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles and concluded he’s faking or exaggerating his mental condition.
Defense experts Helena Chui, a University of Southern California neurology professor; and Stacey Wood, a neurology professor at Scripps College, both said Girardi has dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Wood testified that Girardi is incompetent to stand trial, but prosecutors pointed out that Chui “readily conceded that she was not asked to conduct a competency evaluation, nor does she have any expertise in that field.”
Prosecutors’ post-hearing brief said the defense assessments “merely obscure the true measure of defendant’s ability to understand the proceedings against him and assist meaningfully in his defense.”
Prosecutors referenced a profane utterance from Girardi during the competency hearing when arguing he can obviously understand the proceedings. The 84-year-old’s decision to mutter “f— you” at Assistant U.S. Attorney Ali Moghaddas while Moghaddas was cross-examining Wood was done so “that no one in the courtroom other than his counsel and the prosecutor heard it.”
“Far from demonstrating severe, or even moderate dementia, defendant demonstrated an understanding of the limits of acceptable courtroom etiquette,” according to an Oct. 27 brief from Moghaddas and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty.
Regarding Girardi’s incompetency claims, Edelson told me in a message on Tuesday that Girardi’s “decades of defrauding clients and the public unsurprisingly extended to the courts in a desperate attempt to evade justice.”
“Thankfully, the Court saw through this charade. The upcoming trials not only promise some semblance of justice for the victims of his fraud but also means something larger for the plaintiff’s. bar. As much as some want to cast Tom as an aberration, he is indicative of a more pervasive rot within certain segments of the plaintiff’s injury bar. The upcoming criminal trials will keep a much-needed spotlight on our bar which hopefully will lead to the type of foundational reforms that have been too long in coming,” Edelson wrote.
Girardi, the former boss of the now-bankrupt Girardi Keese LLP in Los Angeles, also is charged in a Northern District of Illinois indictment related to alleged embezzlement of money from clients in lawsuits over a deadly plane crash. Edelson was his local co-counsel in the case, and his report to the presiding judge about missing money is what led to Girardi’s public downfall in late 2020.
Girardi’s wife, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne, left him around the same time Edelson came forward, but they are not divorced and testimony in the competency hearing revealed they’re still in contact.
Girardi’s massive embezzlement scheme led to a reckoning within the California State Bar, which fielded 136 of complaints about him between August 1982 and December 2020 but never took serious action. The agency disbarred Girardi in July 2022 (approved by the California Supreme Court), and state bar prosecutors are seeking the disbarment of two of his law partners, Keith Griffin and David Lira.
Griffin’s hearing was in October; State Bar Court Judge Phong Wang has 90 days from then to rule.
Edelson, meanwhile, is suing Girardi, Erika Jayne, and several Girardi associates for racketeering and other civil claims. The case, which is with U.S. District Judge John F. Walter in Los Angeles, is stayed pending the outcome of the criminal cases.
Judge Staton’s competency decision does not extend to Girardi’s Chicago case. The judge in that case is U.S. District Judge Mary M. Rowland, a 2019 Trump appointee who will make her own determination as to Girardi’s competence. She has a status conference scheduled Jan. 18.
I’ll write another article when Judge Staton’s unseals her ruling. UPDATE: Here’s the unsealed order.
Here’s Girardi leaving court in August:
I discussed Girardi’s case on LiveNOW the other week. Here’s the full video:
Previous coverage, with all briefs inside:
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I’m glad he was found competent. He is and deserves to stand trial. Sometimes justice actually prevails.