Prosecutors of the California state bar have deposited accusations of discipline against a former principal lawyer to the firm of lawyers in disgrace to the former handicapped Tom Girardi. The lawyer is accused of having hidden details of a $ 53 million settlement to one of his customers.
The accusations against Robert Finnerty, 70, focus on his role of lawyer for Joseph Ruigomer, a man in the bay region who has suffered devastating burns over most of his body in the explosion of the San Bruno 2010 pipeline.
Finnerty and Girardi represented Ruigomez as well as Ruigomez’s parents and sister in a trial against Pacific Gas & Electric.
According to the accusations filed before the Court of the State Bar which was disclosed on Monday, Finnerty in 2013 negotiated the regulations of $ 53 million with pg & e without the knowledge or the approval of the Ruigomez family, and the family was not informed of the total amount of the regulation at the time.
Rather, they were told that the regulations were much lower: that after the fees of lawyers, Joseph would receive $ 5 million, his parents would receive $ 1 million and his sister would receive $ 250,000. The family only saw the signing pages of the settlement agreement, not the full document, according to the accusations.
The case against Finnerty marks the last efforts of the California state bar to request the responsibility of people affiliated with the Girardi Keese law firm now closed. Girardi has been struck off; Another lawyer faces a 15 -month suspension; And a third lawyer faces several accusations of misconduct.
Finnerty and her lawyers did not respond to messages asking for comments.
Prosecutors have described the efforts of the Ruigomez family to obtain fundamental information from their lawyer about a negotiated settlement on their behalf, then collect the total amount owed to them.
Although Pg & e won the money in Girardi in January 2013, the Ruigomez family has not learned that money is available for several months. In May 2013, Ruigomez’s mother Kathleen sent an email to Finnerty requesting regulation accounts.
“I have not received anything with regard to documents in the case, except for signature pages,” she wrote. “It’s been months”, adding, “when should I get documents such as the settlement agreement …?”
It was not until more than a year later, on October 30, 2014, that Girardi sent files revealing that an $ 25 million annuity had been bought on behalf of Joseph Ruigomez, as well as other files that revealed the rules.
The family pressed their money.
Finnerty and Girardi told Ruigomezes that the funds were held in an account of interest, although such an account did not exist. From 2016 to 2019, the Girardi Keese firm intermittently sent the so-called payments of interest to the Ruigomez family, but did not send the full regulations or provided a copy of the settlement agreement.
There is no allegation according to which Finnerty himself has diverted the settlement. But the deposit blame for not having revealed that at least 6.6 million dollars were diverted, based on the balance of the Girardi Keese trust account.
“Even if (Finnerty) knew, or had been roughly negligent not to know, that the Girardi firm had poorly extended the rules for the Ruigomezes, he never informed the Ruigomezes that the Girardi firm had poorly extended his settlement funds”, wrote the producers of the state bar.
Finnerty left Girardi’s law firm around 2019 and started working for the Encino Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo law firm, or the Acts Act. That year, the Ruigomez family continued Girardi before the Superior Court and accused him of having diverted the funds. Months later, Girardi signed an agreement to pay $ 12 million, but after $ 1 million, payments stopped.
The Ruigomez family intensified their efforts to collect in 2020, putting a privilege on the house of Girardi and issuing assignments to his compartments to his accountant, his wife then – Erika Girardi – and his personal travel agent. They also forced Girardi to testify under oath about his finances, provoking an extraordinary admission of him at a time when he always enjoyed a reputation as a rich and influential lawyer.
“At one point, I had around 80 million or 50 million in cash. Everything disappeared,” said Girard in the summer of 2020. “I have no money.”
In a few months, Girardi’s company imploded and was referred for a criminal investigation. Last summer, a federal jury condemned Girardi of four wire fraud chiefs to divert millions of dollars from the customers of his law firm, including the Ruigomez family, then using the funds to take out a sumptuous lifestyle.
His conviction has been delayed because a judge assessed if Girardi must be sent to a medical establishment or a federal prison.
During the criminal trial, a federal agent testified that Finnerty was part of a handful of former Girardi subordinates which were warned by the federal authorities that they were targets in a current fraud investigation, the times reported. The status of this probe is not clear.
California Daily Newspapers
