A man who once was one of Hollywood’s most noted attorneys testified via video deposition Friday that he loved a former girlfriend who is now suing him, but denied he physically abused her and said he tried to help her financially.
“I just wanted to help her out and she gave me a kick in the you-know- what,” Neil Papiano stated in a July 2012 deposition played to a Los Angeles Superior Court jury hearing the trial of plaintiff Katherine Parnello’s case against him.
Once a familiar figure in the courtroom, Papiano’s past clients included actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins, singer Michael Jackson, former Dodger Steve Garvey, announcer Ed McMahon and onetime Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley. The 80-year-old Papiano has been classified as involuntarily inactive by the State Bar since being diagnosed with dementia in the months after his deposition was taken.
He is currently incompetent to testify and he sat in a wheelchair, often asleep, while his deposition was played.
Parnello, 57, is the daughter of Joe Parnello, a former conductor for Frank Sinatra who died in 1987. She sued Papiano and his law firm, Iverson, Yoakum, Papiano & Hatch, in August 2012. She alleges he physically and mentally abused her during the latter part of their romance that lasted from 2006 to 2012. She also says she gave up her job designing intimate lingerie for celebrities after he promised to support her financially for life.
During his testimony, Papiano denied many of the accusations leveled upon him when she told jurors last week that he battered her in both public and private places, including well-known restaurants such as the Turf Club at Santa Anita Race Track and the Derby in Arcadia.
“Did you ever hit her?,” asked Parnello’s lawyer, William Glucksman.
“No, she says I have,” Papiano replied. “She says other things, too.”
Asked if he ever squeezed her in the cheeks, Papiano answered, “Are you kidding? Of course not.”
Papiano said Parnello followed her to one eatery he did not identify and that she embarrassed him when she started yelling at him in front of other people.
“I just pulled her out … by the arm and put her in her car,” Papiano said. “She was yelling and screaming and the whole place was going nuts.”
Asked if he caused her to fall to the floor, Papiano responded, “If she ended up on the floor she did it herself. She made a fool of herself. She had no right to be there.”
When Glucksman inquired if Papiano had kicked her at Santa Anita Race Track, where Papiano was a frequent visitor, he answered, “Oh, come on. The answer is no.”
Parnello frequently asked for financial assistance, Papiano said.
“She was always asking for money,” he said. “She got a lot of money from me.”
Papiano said he gave her checks for legal services Parnello performed for him, but that he could not remember the nature of her work. He said he gave her a credit card, but did not authorize her to write checks from his account.
Papiano denied Parnello’s claim that he gave her permission to make medical decisions on his behalf if he became too ill to decide them for himself. He became angry when Glucksman asked him if he gave Parnello personal belongings from his late mother.
“I loved my mother,” Papiano said. “Maybe you don’t. I can’t imagine you would go that low.”
Papiano said he did not urge Parnello to give up her career to devote time to him.
“No, I would like her to have the best of all those opportunities,” he said.
Parnello said he loved Parnello, but denied their relationship was as intimate as she testified, saying they had sex at most four times.
Parnello is seeking damages and a return of the musical compilation of Sinatra recordings she says was put together by her father and that she lent to Papiano. She also maintains the law firm shares responsibility for the battering Papiano allegedly inflicted upon her.
Papiano has countersued Parnello, alleging he gave her $250,000 in February 2012 to buy property in his name, but she later stopped communicating with him when he checked to see what she did with the money.
“I want that money and I’m going to go after her to get it,” Papiano testified. “I think she’s probably blown it by now.”
Papiano represented Taylor in a libel and defamation of character lawsuit she filed against The National Enquirer, which paid her an undisclosed amount of money and issued her an apology.
In the mid-1970s, Papiano was hired by Finley to file a restraint-of- trade lawsuit against Major League Baseball and then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
— City News Service