Fraud trial set for May for disbarred LA attorney Tom Girardi
A May 21 trial date was set on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 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 granted a prosecution request for a May trial alongside co-defendant Chris Kamon, the former chief financial officer of Girardi’s now-defunct law firm, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Defense attorneys had unsuccessfully pushed to delay the trial until February 2025. Girardi did not attend Wednesday’s hearing.
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.”
The indictment alleges that, from 2010 to December 2020, Girardi and Kamon pocketed about $18 million that belonged to clients.
Girardi, of Seal Beach, who owned the downtown Los Angeles-based Girardi Keese firm, is free on $250,000 bond and lives in the memory ward of an Orange County nursing home. Kamon is awaiting trial in federal custody.
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.