Lawyers Wednesday are expected to discuss a possible trial date for disbarred attorney Tom Girardi, who was found competent to stand trial on federal fraud charges despite his claim that he has Alzheimer’s disease and is incapable of assisting with his defense.
The 84-year-old Girardi — estranged husband of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne — is facing multiple counts of wire fraud, a crime carrying a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years on each count.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton last week declared Girardi mentally competent to face charges for allegedly embezzling millions of dollars from clients and wrote that although the defendant suffers from a mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment, he is able to stand trial “under the relevant legal standard.”
Prosecutors want to bring Girardi to trial in downtown Los Angeles in March or April, while the defense recommends a trial date in February 2025.
The indictment alleges that, from 2010 to December 2020, Girardi and his law firm’s former chief financial officer fraudulently obtained about $18 million that belonged to clients.
Girardi, of Seal Beach, who owned the downtown Los Angeles-based Girardi Keese law firm, is free on $250,000 bond and lives in the memory ward of an Orange County nursing home.
Girardi became widely known when he was thanked in the credits of the 2001 Oscar-winning film “Erin Brockovich,” for which he served as an adviser. The attorney was part of the legal team when Brockovich successfully sued Pacific Gas & Electric in 1993 for contaminating the groundwater of a small California town.
After he was disbarred two years ago, the State Bar of California reported it had received 205 complaints against Girardi alleging he misappropriated settlement money, abandoned clients and committed other serious ethical violations over the course of his four-decade career.
Girardi Keese, famous for representing plaintiffs in large-scale civil litigation against major corporations, collapsed in late 2020 after Girardi was accused in a Chicago lawsuit of embezzling money meant for clients the firm was representing in litigation over an airline crash in Indonesia. The lawsuit brought by plaintiffs’ firm Edelson PC has since been transferred to Los Angeles.
Girardi is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, as is the now-shuttered Wilshire Boulevard law firm that bore his name, which faces more than $500 million in claims.