By FRED SHUSTER
Disbarred attorney Tom Girardi will stand trial on federal criminal charges without co-defendant Chris Kamon after a Los Angeles judge ruled that the defense strategy of Girardi’s former bookkeeper would likely bias the jury against the estranged husband of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne, according to court papers obtained Thursday.
Girardi, 85, who was found competent to stand trial despite his claim that he has Alzheimer’s disease and is incapable of assisting with his defense, faces multiple counts of wire fraud, a crime carrying a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years on each count.
Girardi’s trial is set for Aug. 6 in downtown Los Angeles. Kamon’s trial date has not yet been scheduled.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton granted a defense motion to split the case into separate trials on Wednesday, finding that the defendants’ anticipated defense strategies would pit Girardi against Kamon in such a way that each would tend to act as a “second prosecutor” of the other.
“Here, the government has characterized the evidence as establishing that defendant Girardi carried out the main fraudulent scheme and that he was aided and abetted by defendant Kamon in the latter’s role as an accountant,” the judge wrote in the order filed in LA federal court.
“Generally, this fact lends itself to a joint trial, as evidence of the existence of a scheme to defraud and the manner and means through which it was allegedly carried out is likely to be the same as to both defendants. But the potential for prejudice arises out of the anticipated defenses, which pits defendant Girardi against defendant Kamon such that each will tend to act as a ‘second prosecutor’ of the other.”
A government spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
The indictment alleges that from 2010 to December 2020, Girardi and Kamon embezzled and pocketed about $18 million that belonged to clients of the now-defunct downtown Los Angeles law firm Girardi Keese, which Girardi co-owned.
Girardi, of Seal Beach, is free on $250,000 bond and lives in the memory ward of an Orange County nursing home. Kamon, 50, 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.
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After he was disbarred in 2022, 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.