“She’s horrified and appalled that she was the unknowing recipient of tainted gifts,” Jackson said, adding that she ”disgorged all gifts she’s aware of over the last two days.” He said that during the affair that began in 2012 and ended in September 2016, the justice believed Girardi was “a successful attorney” and had no reason to suspect there was any possibility the gifts derived from misappropriated client funds.
Bigelow’s attorney refused to identify the total value of the gifts returned or describe them. Hundreds of former Girardi clients say the legendary lawyer stole tens of millions of dollars from their settlements, and are hoping to recoup their money through bankruptcy proceedings. “Justice Bigelow does not want anything even potentially connected with monies Girardi took from his client-victims,” her attorney, Alan Jackson, told The Times in an interview Thursday. Bigelow, who stepped down last year as presiding justice of an appellate court division in Los Angeles, handed over the gifts this week after The Times asked for an explanation of checks Girardi wrote to her in 2017, including one for $5,000 from his law firm’s bank account.Īn attorney for Bigelow said that her romance with Girardi had concluded by then, and that she could find no record of having cashed that check or one for $10,000 from an account Girardi shared with his wife, Erika, star of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” But the inquiry apparently prompted Bigelow to turn over other gifts to the trustee overseeing the defunct law firm Girardi Keese.
A retired California appellate justice who carried on a four-year affair with Tom Girardi has returned numerous gifts from the now-disgraced lawyer to a bankruptcy trustee, an attorney for the former justice said.
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