Tom Girardi\u2019s high-flying legal career may have been made for Hollywood, from a portrayal in the film \u201cErin Brockovich\u201d to a tumultuous marriage to reality TV star Erika Jayne, but its stunning collapse started in a federal courtroom in Chicago nearly six years ago.<\/p>\n
Known for going after big companies whose negligence caused tragic consequences, Girardi\u2019s famed Los Angeles firm, Girardi Keese, was suing Chicago-based Boeing on behalf of families of victims from the 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed all 189 people aboard. The firm had collected millions in settlement payments from Boeing that it was supposed to disburse to clients beginning in March 2020.<\/p>\n
Instead, the case took a dramatic turn before U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, who found that Girardi had been stealing the funds and covering it up. The revelations sparked a nationwide investigation into misconduct by Girardi and others at his firm, ultimately landing Girardi in prison for nearly 7 \u00bd years.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, a final chapter in the story of Girardi\u2019s downfall unfolded down the hall from Durkin\u2019s courtroom, where Keith Griffin, a former lawyer for Girardi Keese, was sentenced to two years of probation for criminal contempt for helping hide Girardi\u2019s lies about why the victims had not been paid.<\/p>\n
During the 90-minute hearing, U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt said she found it \u201cdisappointing and reprehensible\u201d that Griffin and other lawyers who worked for the firm used the trust placed in them to lie to vulnerable victims and attempt to deceive the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the reason why this went on is because of the status of these victims, who didn\u2019t know what to do,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cI don\u2019t think you can separate out the fact that there were innocent victims here who trusted the lawyers that they hired and those lawyers intentionally did not protect their rights. They had no other recourse.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Hunt said Griffin played \u201costrich\u201d by sticking his head in the sand, he was ultimately the least culpable player in the scheme, who was \u201cleft holding the bag when it all imploded.\u201d In rejecting the prosecution\u2019s call for a three-month jail sentence, the judge also said Griffin\u2019s bad choice to try to cover for his famous boss does not negate an otherwise \u201cupstanding\u201d career spent advocating for often-desperate clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day, this too will pass, and hopefully you will have lessons to share with your children and grandchildren and others to show that you have bounced back from a horrible period in your life,\u201d Hunt told Griffin, seated at the defense table in a charcoal suit and dark blue tie. \u201cYou are not your worst moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the sentence was handed down, Griffin stood at the lectern and let out a sigh before apologizing to the Lion Air clients and their families, as well as to Durkin and the justice system as a whole. He said he\u2019s often thought of the lectures he\u2019d give his children about standing up to bullies and doing the right thing, even when it\u2019s difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am embarrassed and ashamed because I did something that is particularly difficult for me to accept,\u201d he said. \u201cI was a hypocrite \u2026 When it was my turn to speak truth to power, I was weak, and that is something that I will live with for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girardi was once among the most prominent lawyers in the nation, often representing victims of major disasters against powerful companies. One lawsuit against California\u2019s Pacific Gas and Electric utility led to a $333 million settlement and was portrayed in the 2000 Julia Roberts film \u201cErin Brockovich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girardi\u2019s fame hit another level when he married \u201cThe Real Housewives of Beverly Hills\u201d star Erika Jayne \u2014 a former cocktail waitress 33 years his junior \u2014 and appeared on the show himself dozens of times between 2015 and 2020.<\/p>\n
The misconduct in the Lion Air case first began to come to light in 2020 when Chicago firm Edelson PC, which served as local counsel for the plaintiffs, discovered Girardi\u2019s firm had failed to distribute millions in payments made by Boeing beginning that March.<\/p>\n
Court records uncovered during hearings before Durkin show that over the course of about six months Girardi instructed Griffin and others in his firm, including his son-in-law, David Lira, to give a variety of excuses to the clients about the failure to pay them the settlement money, including blaming complications from the COVID-19 pandemic and nonexistent tax issues.<\/p>\n
In November 2020, an increasingly anxious Griffin sent a note to his boss warning him that Edelson was about to take action in court, saying he had \u201c12 days to pay the Boeing clients the balance of their funds,\u201d which at the time amounted to about $3.2 million, records show.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they do not receive their funds by Nov. 30th, they have indicated that they are all filing bar complaints and a criminal complaint with the DA\u2019s office,\u201d Griffin wrote. \u201cThis could not be more serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Dec. 3, 2020, Edelson indeed filed a rule to show cause that prompted Durkin to freeze Girardi\u2019s assets and hold him in civil contempt in an attempt to recover the lost funds. At a hearing later that month, Durkin also warned Jayne to stop selling items with ties to her husband, including designer clothing from a firm where he had a stake.<\/p>\n
\u201cApparently these are clothes she is selling that belong to her. I don\u2019t know whether assets she is selling are considered community property (but) if she\u2019s selling assets that are property of Thomas Girardi, either whole or in part, you need to inform her of the danger that puts her in,\u201d Durkin told an attorney for the reality star at the time.<\/p>\n
Jayne was never accused of any wrongdoing in the case.<\/p>\n
But three years after the allegations in the Boeing settlement emerged, Girardi was indicted in separate cases filed in Chicago and Los Angeles on charges he stole more than $18 million from clients around the world, including a California couple whose son was paralyzed in a car crash, an Arizona widow whose husband died in a boat accident, and a dozen families who lost loved ones in the Lion Air crash in the Java Sea.<\/p>\n
Though he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s disease, a judge found Girardi competent to stand trial and he was convicted by a jury of wire fraud in 2024 in Los Angeles, where U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada called him a \u201cRobin-Hood-in-reverse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now 87, Girardi was sentenced last year to seven years and three months in prison and ordered to pay a $35,000 fine and $2.3 million in restitution to former clients. He\u2019s serving his time at a medical prison facility in Rochester, Minnesota, and is not due to be released until 2031, records show.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors in Chicago later moved to dismiss the indictment here due to Girardi\u2019s age and lengthy prison sentence. But cases against Griffin, Lira and Christopher Kamon, longtime Girardi Keese chief financial officer, moved forward, with all pleading guilty to their roles in helping cover wrongdoing at the firm.<\/p>\n
In court Thursday, Griffin\u2019s attorney, Mark Werksman, sought to portray his client\u2019s missteps as \u201ca process crime\u201d against the court, saying he was just a salaried employee and that it was the \u201clarger than life\u201d Girardi, who jetted around the world with his reality star wife while feeding \u201cphoney-baloney\u201d excuses to Griffin to relay to clients.<\/p>\n
When Griffin tried to get his boss to make good on the settlement money, Girardi would say something about it being \u201cabove your pay grade,\u201d Werksman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s given the unenviable task of passing along Mr. Girardi\u2019s BS to Edelson, and he didn\u2019t know it was BS,\u201d Werksman said. \u201cMr. Griffin didn\u2019t know until it was too late that he couldn\u2019t trust his boss, the only boss he\u2019d ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
In asking for jail time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Hasten acknowledged that Girardi was the \u201cvillain\u201d in the case, but said his fraud would not have been possible with enablers like Griffin who were willing to look the other way.<\/p>\n
Hasten also said that no matter how difficult it might have been to rat on his boss, Griffin owed it to his clients to call the judge and tell him what was going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe does not tell the world what he knows internally, which is that Tom Girardi is a thief,\u201d Hasten said. \u201cThis is terrible, terrible conduct, and if there is a case where a lawyer should go to jail for a couple months, based on these facts I think it\u2019s this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report<\/p>\n
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Girardi\u2019s high-flying legal career may have been made for Hollywood, from a portrayal in the film \u201cErin…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":986030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5295,171,5386,1818,2765,1370,50,1072,7156],"class_list":["post-986029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-keywee","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-tv-and-streaming"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117052382231114645","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=986029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/986030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=986029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=986029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=986029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}