Troubled Los Angeles trial lawyer Tom Girardi suffers from Alzheimer’s illness and can’t perceive or take part in court docket proceedings, in accordance with a psychiatrist who examined him final month.
The doctor’s evaluation was revealed Wednesday in a Superior Courtroom submitting by an lawyer for Girardi’s youthful brother, who has short-term conservatorship of the famed 81-year-old lawyer.
Dr. Nathan Lavid, a Lengthy Seashore forensic and medical psychiatrist, met with Girardi on Feb. 26 as a part of the conservatorship case initiated in January by his brother Robert. Lavid discovered “main impairment” in Girardi’s short-term reminiscence, logical reasoning and recognition of acquainted objects and other people, in accordance with a sworn declaration. The psychiatrist indicated that Girardi was experiencing delusions and “severely disorganized considering.”
Girardi has dominated civil regulation in California for many years, profitable billions in judgments for plaintiffs in product legal responsibility, private harm and poisonous air pollution instances. He’s finest recognized for his function within the case depicted in “Erin Brockovich” and his marriage to singer Erika Jayne, a star of “Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
His venerable agency, Girardi Keese, collapsed in December amid rising evidence that Girardi had stolen or in any other case misappropriated greater than $13 million in settlements from a burn sufferer and the survivors of victims of an Indonesian airplane crash. Collectors subsequently pressured him out of business, and a federal decide referred him for prison investigation.
A prison protection lawyer he retained had stated in December that Girardi was unable to help in his protection, make clear the lacking cash or perceive his present straits. The psychiatrist’s declaration this week bolstered these assertions.
Lavid, a consulting psychiatrist for the Superior Courtroom, wrote that Girardi had “late onset” Alzheimer’s and indicated he was unable, medically, to attend proceedings “for the foreseeable future.”
“Dementia impairs his skill to grasp the listening to,” Lavid wrote. “His emotional misery is straight associated to his dementia and exacerbated by his confusion.”
The submitting got here a day after the State Bar of California, the company that regulates the state’s authorized career, designated Girardi’s license as inactive. The transfer renders Girardi unable to apply regulation and seemed to be the results of the conservatorship and never any disciplinary motion by the state bar.
A Times investigation discovered Girardi and his agency had been sued greater than 100 instances during the last 4 many years, with quite a few allegations of authorized malpractice and misappropriation of settlement funds, however maintained an unblemished license on the state bar.
Girardi’s brother was appointed short-term conservator following a listening to final month, and the Orange County dentist is looking for a extra everlasting guardianship at a listening to subsequent week. Nicholas Van Brunt, an lawyer representing Robert Girardi, stated through e mail, “This clearly continues to be a heartbreaking time for Robert.”
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