Tom Girardi declared competent to stand trial

A federal judge in Los Angeles has found Tom Girardi competent to stand trial, paving the way for the disgraced former lawyer to go before a jury this year and answer charges that he stole more than $15 million from his clients as part of a decades-long fraud scheme.

The decision was announced Tuesday in a brief notation on the case docket that said U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton had filed an “order finding defendant competent to stand trial.” The order was placed under seal until lawyers for both sides have a chance to identify information in it that they want kept confidential, such as health records or other sensitive material.

The ruling was a victory for prosecutors and for legions of Girardi’s former clients who feared that their erstwhile lawyer’s dementia diagnosis would forestall a jury trial and accountability for the 84-year-old.

“He’s not above the law,” said former client Danny Barnes, who estimates he lost about $2 million from a settlement in the 1990s for Lockheed workers who said they were poisoned by chemicals used at the aerospace facility. Though the indictment does not cover his claim, he said Girardi’s prosecution validated all who felt victimized: “He’s done a lot of harm to people. He’s damaged families. He stole our money and our heritage. He knows it, so he should be afraid.”

Joseph Ruigomez, who suffered catastrophic burn injuries as a teenager in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, is named in the indictment as one of Girardi’s victims.

“I was pretty surprised,” Ruigomez said of the competency decision. Girardi in 2013 negotiated a $53-million settlement for Ruigomez and his parents and is alleged to have stolen part of it. “I thought they were going to let them off easy.”

Girardi faces the prospect of dying in prison if convicted of wire-fraud charges that carry the possibility of a decades-long sentence.

In addition to the Los Angeles case, federal prosecutors in Chicago are pursuing an indictment against Girardi related to the misappropriation of money due to airline crash victims’ families. The Chicago court is expected to follow the competency decision in California.

Both cases derive from what authorities have described as a long-running Ponzi scheme that bilked injured clients of settlement money while Girardi and his now-estranged wife, “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Girardi, known as Erika Jayne, enjoyed a historic Pasadena mansion and a lifestyle of private jet travel, lavish meals and designer wardrobes.

Because Girardi’s lawyers asserted his incompetence a year ago at his first court appearance, a magistrate judge entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.

The competency finding is a rejection of arguments his attorneys laid out at a three-day hearing last year contending that Girardi suffers from memory problems so profound that he is unable to recognize the lawyers from meeting to meeting, let alone meet the legal standard of understanding the charges against him and having the wherewithal to assist in preparing a defense.

The onetime power broker, a major Democratic party donor and a force in California law, now lives in a locked memory care ward of an Orange County nursing home. Some of the nearly dozen witnesses who testified at the competency hearing said he appeared unaware that his law firm, Girardi Keese, had ceased operations, with some associates relating that he spent long hours scribbling gibberish on legal pads.

Prosecutors maintain Girardi is faking. While conceding that he has memory problems, they have contended he was exaggerating his symptoms to escape accountability, part of a career of manipulating judges, other lawyers and the legal system to his advantage. During the competency hearing, Asst. U.S. Atty. Ali Moghaddas called it “the most important case in Tom Girardi’s life.”

How the judge analyzed the dueling neurological experts and testimony of former friends will not be clear until her ruling is unsealed.

Both sides drew on Girardi’s May-December relationship with Erika, 52, though she was not interviewed by either side or summoned to offer testimony. She filed for divorce in 2020 following 20 years of marriage, as her husband’s firm was on the brink of collapse, but the two have remained in touch, speaking daily, she has said. Girardi bankrolled her music career as the pop singer Erika Jayne.

Under questioning by Girardi’s lawyers, the judge heard about a 2019 incident in which Girardi showed a photo of his wife to an assistant and seemed baffled as to the identity of the woman in the picture.

Memory experts who interviewed him for the proceedings said he insisted he had no recollection of his marriage, but in one session with a prosecution expert, he fielded a call from the reality star and immediately asked her about a trip to Spain, where the “Housewives” had gone to film.

The judge’s order means Girardi will continue spending time in the courthouse, once the seat of his power but, in recent months, sites of angry outbursts and scenes of bewilderment. Arriving in August at Staton’s courtroom in downtown L.A., Girardi looked around with a dazed expression and said, “Where are we going?”

Later in the proceedings, he insulted a prosecutor with a profanity during testimony and used an expletive to dress down one of his own attorneys for preventing him from speaking to a witness. He told his lawyer then, “You think I’ve never been in a court before.”