Attorneys tangle over Tom Girardi mental health hearing date
By FRED SHUSTER
Attorneys are fighting over when to hold a hearing in downtown Los Angeles regarding the results of convicted former legal heavyweight Tom Girardi’s recent six-week mental health evaluation at a federal medical facility, according to court papers obtained Monday by City News Service.
The disbarred former attorney spent about 45 days at FMC Butner, a federal prison in North Carolina for male inmates who have special health needs, to determine Girardi’s true level of cognitive impairment before he is sentenced for stealing $15 million from injured clients in a long-running and complex Ponzi scheme.
Prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office want the hearing held in L.A. federal court no later than April 11, but Girardi’s lawyers oppose the government’s proposed date and are pushing for May 16 instead, documents show.
The mental health evaluation was ordered by U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton to help her determine whether the 85-year-old defendant should be sentenced to prison or hospitalized in a care facility for the rest of his life following August 2024 convictions on four counts of wire fraud.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons submitted its roughly 30-page evaluation of Girardi on March 11. The report “is neither complex nor voluminous … and does not recommend further testing or evaluation of defendant,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty wrote.
“Defendant has had ample time to retain any expert to review and evaluate the BOP report,” the prosecutor wrote in support of the April 11 date.
Paetty indicated that Girardi’s federal public defender, Samuel Cross, wants more time in order to consult with already-retained expert witnesses regarding the report, and to consult with other potential expert and lay witnesses.
Cross declined comment on Monday.
It is expected that once the mental health evaluation is discussed in court, Staton will set a sentencing date.
The judge ordered Girardi sent to Butner after granting a defense motion in December to explore whether Girardi’s symptoms of mental decline rise to the degree where hospitalization is more suitable than a prison cell. Federal prosecutors recommend “a significant custodial sentence” at a BOP correctional facility that offers appropriate health services, if warranted.
The government argues that there is no reasonable cause to believe that Girardi’s mental condition requires hospitalization, prosecutors wrote in supplemental sentencing papers late last year.
“The parties, and the court, agree that defendant shows some signs of cognitive impairment,” prosecutors wrote about four months ago. “However, the court on numerous occasions noted that defendant has exhibited signs of malingering and has shown the ability to engage in sophisticated conduct designed to exaggerate the symptoms of mental decline for his own benefit. As a result of this malingering, it is difficult to accurately determine defendant’s true level of impairment.”
Girardi has been housed in the secure memory care section of an assisted living facility in Orange County, as opposed to a hospital, since June 2022, prosecutors said.
In earlier papers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office asked that Girardi be sentenced to 14 years behind bars for stealing millions from clients. The defense countered that the disbarred lawyer is a “broke, half-blind, incontinent, 85-year-old man with dementia” who should instead be placed in a locked medical facility for the rest of his life.
Once ranked among the most successful and prominent lawyers in the country, Girardi was scheduled to be sentenced in downtown Los Angeles following the trial that ended in his convictions. Prosecutors contend Girardi stole millions from clients and spent the money on private jets, golf club memberships, jewelry and the career of his now-estranged wife, former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne.
In a money judgment of forfeiture filed by Staton on Friday, the judge ordered Girardi liable for almost $3.8 million in restitution for perpetrating what prosecutors call “a cunning fraud scheme against the injured clients he had a sworn duty to protect.”
Girardi’s “yearslong theft of client funds from his law firm’s trust accounts and the myriad lies he told to cover up his theft represent a calculated and devastating betrayal of the very people that turned to him for help in their darkest hour,” prosecutors wrote.
Formerly known as a defender of the powerless in class-action lawsuits against corporations, Girardi represented plaintiffs in a number of high-profile cases, including Bryan Stow’s civil suit against Major League Baseball. Stow was the San Francisco Giants fan who sustained severe injuries during an attack in a Dodger Stadium parking lot.
Girardi also represented plaintiffs in the toxic groundwater case against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. that was dramatized in the Oscar award-winning 2000 Julia Roberts movie “Erin Brockovich.”
But that version of Girardi no longer exists, his attorneys say.
“He has lost everything, from his possessions, to his reputation, to his mind,” defense papers say. “He spends his days in a lockdown memory-care facility where he occupies a shared room and requires round-the-clock assistance for basic tasks. He has to be tricked into taking a shower on the pretense of going to court, and spends his time writing pages of notes about imaginary legal cases and clients that do not exist. He does not recall the trial or the verdict in this matter.”
Girardi’s lawyers argue that a custodial sentence is not necessary because their client is an octogenarian first-time offender convicted of nonviolent crimes who poses no ongoing or future threat to society.
The well-publicized criminal trial, the collapse of his Girardi Keese law firm, and the State Bar’s response has left Girardi “a penniless pariah” and a “cautionary tale for lawyers nationwide,” his attorneys wrote.
“A sentence of lifetime confinement to a medical facility would be sufficient,” the defense wrote, asking the judge to decline to apply federal sentencing guidelines.
Girardi was convicted in August 2024 of running the massive 10-year scheme in which prosecutors said he siphoned at least $15 million in settlement funds from four of his clients. Girardi showed no visible reaction as the verdicts were read in Los Angeles federal court. He suffers from some degree of dementia by all accounts but was deemed able to assist in his own defense during the trial, and he even testified.
Girardi’s law firm’s former chief accountant, Chris Kamon, 51, formerly of Encino and Palos Verdes and who was living in the Bahamas at the time of his November 2022 arrest, pleaded guilty in October 2024 to two wire fraud counts for enabling the embezzlement of tens of millions of dollars from the firm’s clients and for embezzling money from Girardi Keese itself.
Kamon faces sentencing April 11.
Girardi, Kamon and David R. Lira, Girardi’s son-in-law and a former lawyer at Girardi Keese, face other federal fraud allegations in Chicago.
Last year, after several days of hearings, Girardi was found competent to stand trial despite his claim that he has Alzheimer’s disease and was incapable of assisting his lawyers. He was allowed to go free on $250,000 bond.
Girardi’s estranged actress wife filed for divorce in November 2020 after a 21-year marriage. Following the split, the couple listed their Pasadena home for sale at a price of $13 million. Jayne has not been charged in the case against her husband.
After Girardi was disbarred in 2022, the State Bar of California reported it had received 205 complaints against him alleging he misappropriated settlement money, abandoned clients or committed other serious ethical violations over the course of his four-decade career.
Girardi Keese collapsed in late 2020 after Girardi was accused in a lawsuit of embezzling money meant for clients the firm was representing in litigation over an airplane crash in Indonesia.
Girardi is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, as is the now-shuttered Wilshire Boulevard law firm that bore his name and that faces more than $500 million in claims.