It appears that the lavish lifestyles of LA attorneys is in the news these days with Michael Avenatti’s indictments and now a stoush involving prominent plaintiff attorney Thomas Girardi and a litigation funder seeking repayment of an alleged $15 million loan.
Girardi, married to ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ star Erika Jayne, has been involved in a fight with litigation funder Law Finance Group LLC is in arbitration over the loan.
He is a successful and prominent LA attorney perhaps best known for his work on the case against Pacific Gas & Electric, when the company agreed to pay $460 million to 650 residents of the desert community of Hinkley, California and which was the basis of the Erin Brockovich movie, which he advised on.
Although he has appeared occasionally on the Real Housewives show with his wife, over 30 years his junior, he is presumably not looking forward to a public spat should the funder get to attempt to retrieve money by seizing his assets.
The funding provided by the company was allegedly “used to maintain [his] lavish lifestyle and to keep his prominent law firm financially afloat.”
Girardi denies that the funding was for such purposes:
“I have not taken one penny from the law firm in the past three years. I have devoted everything to assist in the cases that we have here. Further, the money that was borrowed, we agreed to repay in approximately two weeks before the lawsuit. It is slanderous that the money was for my ‘lifestyle’ … every penny went for costs in cases that the firm is handling.”
Whatever the case, the spat has put Girardi in a public light that is beyond anything his ‘Real Housewives’ appearances might have contemplated or wanted.
