Girardi’s deception unbeknownst to defense attorneys

In his Nov. 22, 2022, column about the State Bar's letter detailing the scope of Tom Girardi's misdeeds, Nicholas Rowley proclaims: "We as a profession knew Girardi was bad."

I disagree.

The Plaintiffs' Bar - which includes Mr. Rowley, a skilled and decent trial lawyer - may have known or suspected Girardi wasn't on the level. But most of us defense folks did not. Sure, we saw Girardi as a jerk with an attitude who held outsized sway within the profession. That didn't mean we knew he was stealing from clients, nor could we have imagined the extent of his corruption even if we had suspected it.

Girardi liked to frequent the fancy Jonathan Club in downtown L.A. where he always sat at his regular table. But every time I saw him there, Girardi just wanted to ramble about his reality star wife and, for some reason... his travel agent? No one there had any idea as to the things he was doing within his own firm. Embezzlement? Client fund commingling? Out-and-out theft? No clue.

Of course, Girardi had a reputation for getting big cases. We as a profession knew that. Everyone knew that. My firm had one trial with him (we beat him) but the rest of the cases we ever had against Girardi usually were handled by other attorneys at his firm. The firm's offices were adorned with so many silly statutes and other nonsense that it was, frankly, clownish. A couple of years before everybody found all this out, we negotiated a settlement with Girardi and thought he had undervalued the case. Eventually, we all thought he had turned into quite the clown.

However he did it, Girardi kept his deception concealed from most attorneys. Maybe the Plaintiff's Bar knew, but the rest of us had no idea what Girardi was doing. How could we when the State Bar knew but simply looked the other way for decades? I cannot agree that we, as a profession, should look into ourselves and say that we knew Girardi was bad. A jerk, a prima donna, a big mouth, and so on - sure. But we as a profession had no idea of what Girardi was really up to.