Disgraced attorney Tom Girardi still owes $11 million to a client – 11 years after a legal settlement for the terrible injuries he suffered in a gas explosion that also took the life of his girlfriend, a federal court in Los Angeles heard Wednesday.
Joe Ruigomez, 33, and his family hired the once top attorney to sue California utility giant PG&E after the fiery 2010 pipeline explosion destroyed his San Bruno, CA home, putting him in a coma for two months, he told the jury of seven men and five women on the second day of Girardi’s trial.
Girardi and his family reached a settlement with PG&E three years later in which Ruigomez was to receive $5 million plus an annuity, he said.
And when Ruigomez asked to see the full settlement agreement, Girardi promised to send it to him. ‘But he never did.’
Girardi, 85 – estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne – is charged with four counts of wire fraud in which he allegedly cheated clients out of $15 million in settlement funds they were owed for injuries they suffered. He’s pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
The former super lawyer – who showed up at court Wednesday in a gray jacket, open-neck blue check shirt, black pants and white sneakers built a powerful legal firm after his fight against a utility company inspired the Oscar-winning movie Erin Brockovich.
But Girardi’s high-flying career collapsed in 2020 when he was accused of stealing millions in settlements he’d won for the victims of the 2018 Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia.
Claims from that crash – in which 189 people died – are the basis of separate criminal charges against Girardi that are still pending in Chicago. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges as well.
Federal prosecutors in LA on day one of the trial Tuesday maintain that between 2010 and 2020 the shamed attorney – who is facing 20 years in prison if convicted – lied to clients and used their misappropriated millions to pay for his own lavish lifestyle of ‘private jets, luxury cars, expensive jewelry’ with his third wife, ex-go-go dancer Jayne, 52, including $20 million to fund her acting career.
Meanwhile Girardi’s defense attorneys claim that it was not their client but his law firm’s chief executive, Christopher Kamon, 49, who plundered the victims’ settlement funds, embezzling some $50 million.
And they claim that Kamon took advantage of Girardi’s dementia which prevented him from keeping track of his company’s business affairs.
Kamon has been charged with wire fraud charges similar to Girardi’s, but is being tried separately. He is also accused of embezzling $10 million from Girardi’s law firm Girardi Keese which is now ion bankruptcy with $100 million in debts. Kamon has pleaded not guilty to all the counts he’s facing.
At court in downtown LA Wednesday, Ruigomez – who walks with a limp after more than 30 surgeries following the explosion 14 years ago – told jurors that he hadn’t pressed Girardi harder to see a copy of the settlement agreement, ‘because I trusted Tom. I had confidence in him.’
Both Ruigomez and his mother, Kathleen Ruigomez – who was also a witness Wednesday – told how they hired Girardi after he dazzled them with his bragging about million – even billion dollar – settlements he’d won against major corporations like Exxon, Lockheed, Shell and Ford.
‘He boasted about Erin Brockovich and how much money he made for his clients and about his wife who was a TV star,’ said Ruigomez who was also impressed by magazine covers and articles about Girardi’s soaring legal practice.’
His mother, Kathleen added, ‘Tom talked about having lunch with presidents and judges. He was always boasting about his connections.’
Ruigomez said that Girardi – whose law firm claimed a 25 per cent contingency fee (meaning they didn’t charge legal fees but received 25 per cent of the settlement amount) – settled with PG&E in January 2013.
But a year later, he still had not received any money from the Girardi Keese, which was supposed to have put his settlement cash into a trust fund earning six and a half per cent interest.
When he questioned Girardi about the delay, he said, he got ‘excuses and apologies’ and claims that the payout had to be signed by a judge who was reluctant to give a large sum of money to a young man who might not know how to handle it.
‘Tom always buttered me up, called me Babe and told me he was going to take care of me,’ Ruigomez told the court.
Nearly three years after the settlement, he had only received a $666,000 ‘fraction’ of the money he was owed and he started losing patience with Girardi’s excuses which continued until Ruigomez hired a financial adviser and demanded his money.
In 2019, he threatened legal action – which prompted Girardi to make several payments to him totaling $10 million, he said.
But, with interest, he was still owed much more and he hired a lawyer, sued Girardi in civil court and won a judgement for $12 million, the court heard.
Girardi has only paid off $1 million of that amount said Ruigomez, who agreed when prosecutor Ali Moghaddas asked him, ‘To this day, the defendant has not paid the balance of $11 million.’
Under cross examination from defense attorney, Sam Cross, Ruigomez conceded that $25 million of the $53 million settlement was used to buy a Berkshire Hathaway annuity for him that pays him $40,000 a month for the next 20 years.
But when Cross suggested that other attorneys at Girardi Keese, not just Girardi, were responsible for his case, he insisted, ‘Tom was the main attorney’.
One of the excuses Girardi used for not paying Ruigomez, the court heard, was that his family told the lawyer not to pay up because, after his long spell in hospital following the explosion, he became addicted to pain-killing drugs.
‘That’s absolutely not true,’ said Ruigomez.
Another Girardi client, Judy Selberg, hired the once-acclaimed lawyer to bring an unlawful death lawsuit after her husband Paul was killed in a boating accident at Lake Havasu, AZ in April 2018.
In court Wednesday, Selberg told the jury that Girardi won a settlement for her in March 2020 of $500,000, of which Girardi Keese took a contingency fee of 33 percent.
The half million was paid to the law firm in June 2020 but despite it took months of phone calls and email protests to Girardi, she didn’t get her money. Finally she resorted to hiring another lawyer and after that, she received $150,000.
But today, more than four years after the settlement, ‘I’ve never received a penny’ of the $185,000 balance she’s owed.