HunterHunted

I don't know that it would have caused much of a drop in billables. A law firm especially the kind that works on class actions has a lot of people working behind the scenes that clients may never meet or work with regularly. However updates to clients may make mention of those other people or the work they have done. It's like an iceberg; 90% of it is below the surface. I doubt knowledge about Tom's condition would have caused much in the way of a decreased billable hours. Tom likely wasn't billing much or anything at all. He was a rainmaker. Knowledge of Tom's condition may have caused the demise of the firm. Tom was the sole owner of Girardi-Keese. It doesn't sound like he did much succession planning. He also didn't do much in the way of cross-training, redundancy planning, or leadership development among the firm's employees. Even if Tom hadn't been a fucking criminal, the lack of planning for the future of the firm and his sole ownership would have sent the place into a tailspin. The firm would have been at the mercy of whoever managed to get that conservatorship. That's actually something insurmountable. The conservator could choose to close the firm or begin soliciting buyers. If the other attorneys wanted to buy Tom Girardi out, the conservator may not have to entertain that. Tom's obvious lack of succession planning coupled with his condition is the thing that could have destroyed the firm even if Tom hadn't been a crook. The dementia is largely a strategy to impede criminal prosecution because the conservatorship renders Tom presumptively incompetent to stand trial.

I'm assuming you mean a metaphorical master's degree because Paris has a GED and not a single second of college education. Maybe she attended that Harvard Business certificate program for high net worth individuals that Tyra Banks did (and keeps misstating that she has a "degree" from Harvard Business School). Nicky dropped out of FIT. Barron is the only one in the immediate family, other than Rick, with a college degree. Paris might intelligent, but she's not formally educated. As for Kathy, I've never liked her and still don't. She's managed to raise or not raise children with not insignificant periods of awfulness, which includes many instances of proclaiming their bigotry. Furthermore she was usually came off like a cow and bully during her previous appearances on the show. Finally despite Kim saying that Kathy would have her back like a real sister, the one time Kathy publicly got involved in the Kim/Rinna feud was to defend Big Kathy because Rinna said that all three of the sisters were screwed up because of Big Kathy. Kathy chastised Rinna for talking about her mother. Kathy still kept inviting Rinna to her Christmas party.

Chris Kamon

Bethenny's self-aggrandizing is so insufferable. We ALL knew that there were strange things happening with Tom's finances. There's been lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit from the moment she started patting her sparkled puss on national TV. These were lawsuits about improper billings, unpaid loans, and missing settlement money. All of this was public record. Around late 2018 to early 2019 is when the discourse about Tom and the lawsuits fully shifted. That's when a lot of the comments on social media, sites like this and Reddit, and from Real Housewives bloggers and podcasters started consistently talking about the Girardis' money issues. Not only did Bethenny not have some insider wisdom about the Girardis, it's been the prevailing thought for almost 3 years that there is something sketchy and illegal happening with their money. None of these assholes (RHOBH cast and Andy Cohen) were caught unaware; they just didn't give a shit until they were forced to. This reminds me so much of what went down on Vanderpump Rules with Faith. Stassi and Kristen bragged in interviews about what they did with Faith. A lot of us kept up the drum beat that these two had to go. Not a single person at Bravo, Evolution, or LVP gave a good goddamn about the cast's racism until George Floyd was killed. And if all of this hadn't blown up so spectacularly in Tom's and Erika's faces, nobody remotely connected with Bravo would have said anything.

Didn't Kris Jenner and Kathy Hilton do watch parties during the trial. They invited celebrities over and dished about all they knew about OJ and Nicole. None of that is much different from what Faye did. It's just that Faye was an addict, more shameless, and more broke than Kris and Kathy.

Genocide is categorically capital "E" Evil. Human trafficking is evil. Using rape, torture, murder, starvation, kidnapping, drugging, imprisonment, maiming and amputation, and wanton destruction of another's property for coercion, compliance, and/or capricious thrills is evil. I think evil should be superlative and next level awful. I think the mind should reel at evil. It should be unfathomable by regular people. I'm sure this sounds Gothic and ridiculous. Seeing a mom who got herself and her husband off of drugs while getting her kids addicted to pimp them out so she could get money, that bitch was evil. More than 20 years later, it still bothers me. The jealous person who threw acid on their partner permanently disabling and disfiguring them. I've seen some truly fucked up shit. Tom and Erika don't really rank in comparison. Tom and Erika are on the worst end of banal or everyday horrible behavior. They're not good people. They're actually legitimately pretty terrible. Maybe we can call them little "e" evil, but they're not even close to the major leagues and I generally reserve the word evil for things that are unfathomable. However, I believe very strongly that Tom is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar worse than Erika. Erika never met these clients; Tom did. He formed relationships with them. He convinced these desperate people to rely upon him and then he stole their money. Tom is coming across a little better right now because he's not as stupid as shameless as Erika who is busy stunting with couture and cash fans on Instagram like the dumb spoiled shameless trick that she is. Erika doesn't even have the sense God gave Teresa Giudice. Teresa managed to keep her mouth shut and not come across callous and remorseless. Not fucking Erika. She's not even bonkers like Jen Shah. Erika is just basic--greedy, selfish, callous, shameless, boring, and dumb, but Tom was a much worse person.

No! Because he was defrauding clients for 20 years before he married Erika in 1999. Tom's 2nd ex-wife, Kathy Risner, indicated there was something hinky happening with his finances when they were divorcing. Tom's theft and fraud predates Erika. I suspect the Hinkley case in 1996 ($333 million), the Lockheed Martin case in 1998 ($130 million), and the Erin Brockovich film in 2000, for which Tom served as an adviser, were actually the precipitating influences that made Tom more reckless in his theft and spending. The millions of dollars of political contributions, heavily subsidized continuing legal and judicial education classes for judges and members of the CA State Bar, and hundreds of thousands in gifts and favors for prominent individuals in California had absolutely nothing to do with Erika, but we know that Tom used his misappropriated money for those things and many more lawyer focused things too. Remember, this Erika Jayne folly only started about a decade ago. They absolutely didn't spend $100+ million on just her whims and desires. The itemized bills of that $25 million loan shows that $10 million went to Erika Jayne shit and $15 million was for the couple's Amex bill. But he owned 2 planes that were mostly used by Tom before Erika joined RHOBH. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-17/tom-girardi-erika-jayne-rhobh-divorce I have never liked Erika, but we can't act like her greed and desires are the external forces that prompted Tom's theft and fraud. He'd been stealing from before he met her. There were lawsuits about Tom's sketchy behavior and actions in 1983 and there have been one hundred lawsuits since. Erika isn't the cause of this. Tom's marriage to Erika is likely a symptom of the same risk-taking, impulsive, and arrogant behavior present in the rest of his life. He's in the middle of an acrimonious property division wife his 2nd ex-wife while the plaintiffs from Hinkley and Lockheed Martin were complaining that he wasn't handing over their settlement money and that's the moment he decided to marry without a prenup a 28 year old cocktail waitress he'd been dating for 6 months.

I don't think he's evil, but he's a selfish, arrogant, and callous person. Like many gamblers, Tom got lucky on his first time at the metaphorical tables. When no one caught his first fraud, he attributed it more to his skills and smarts than luck. That probably emboldened him and got his adrenaline going. There's a bit of crossover with being a plaintiff's attorney. Taking on those big cases is also a gamble. It is risky and every win emboldened him and made him think the wins had more to do with him than the facts and circumstances of the cases. This allowed Tom to continue to emotionally distance the wins and awards from his clients. The money became more "his" than his clients. He's not evil, but he's pretty fucking terrible. Additionally, Erika was busy talking about how she's never been in a bank or used an ATM because Erika is trying to void the loan agreement. Erika is trying lay out that she didn't actually understand or comprehend the implications of signing the agreement and all of what that might entail. She's also been saying how she relied upon her attorney husband. She's been trying to void agreement so she doesn't have to repay the money. I doubt it would work because even without a full understanding of the technical working of the loan agreement, almost everyone understands the colloquial use of loan. She can't be all Peggy Sulahian "L...L...LL...OH...AN. What means this word?" FFS Peggy! You have BA in English from UCLA!

They're not using it as a ruse to explain his fraud. They're using it to protect Tom from criminal prosecution. Even though Tom had his wits about him during most of his frauds, a criminal prosecution requires him to be able to assist his attorneys in his defense. A conservatorship means another court has said Tom is incapable of making any decisions for himself. And in contrast to something like a mental illness that can be treated with medication and therapy, diagnoses like dementia and brain injury don't have great, good, or really any options for regaining mental faculties. This leaves prosecutors stuck. They might be able to indict and arrest Tom, but they can't go to trial because he's incompetent and can't assist in his own defense. A defendant being unable to assist in his or her defense is a big deal thing that can stymie a prosecution for years and even decades. At most, the court will stick a mentally incompetent defendant in a health care facility until that defendant can regain competency. If they never regain competency, the defendant might be in the health care facility for the maximum time he or she could be incarcerated for that crime. In a case like this, the prosecutor might not bother filing charges against Tom. If Erika and Tom are faking or playing up his cognitive decline, it's to keep him out of prison. However, I'd be concerned if I were any of those people fairly close to Tom who might have had reason to know some of what Tom was up to. They should be concerned that some prosecutor might be able to make a conspiracy, RICO, or accessory after the fact case and keep Tom as an unindicted co-conspirator. Granted, I've never practiced criminal law or in California so take all of this with the understanding that I have no expertise in those areas. But I do know IST (incompetent to stand trial) law, which I know from years of mental health policy work. But there might be larger reasons for a prosecutor to go forward with a prosecution of Tom. The prosecutor might be running for office and wants to be in the headlines as being tough on crime and corruption. They may also plan on using headlines about the prosecution as a hook for calls for larger policy reforms. However, Tom is highly unlikely to see a single second of jail or prison time.

And Jeff Bridges in Iron Man. Gah! I knew I was missing a ton of names.

Feige has also been very vocal about how important Wesley Snipes and Blade were for Marvel and the development of the MCU. Kevin Feige has also said that Wesley actually had been trying to make a Black Panther movie for years before Marvel approached him with Blade. And when Blade came up again for the MCU, they went to talk to him. They said that while he was probably too old to play the character for the MCU, he might have a role somewhere elsewhere in the MCU. I wouldn't be shocked if Wesley ended up with a cameo and a producer credit. I also think the fact that David S. Goyer's post-Blade Trinity work is so inconsistent has helped redeem Snipes. I think the fact that Wesley has a decent enough relationship with Taika to do a What We Do in the Shadows cameo as Blade is another good sign of where Wesley is with Marvel as compared to Stephen Dorff. Stephen Dorff coming for Marvel like he's too good for their silly superhero shtick is ridiculous. He's done his share of shitty films, Feardotcom(.com). I'm not going to clock his work on Immortals because loads of people wanted to work with Tarsem Singh. Loads of very well respected and awarded actors and directors have been associated with the MCU. They've also worked with loads of filmmakers that Dorff would probably love to work with in the future. You'd think he'd have the sense to STFU rather than pointlessly burn bridges. Academy Award Nomination Edward Norton Mark Ruffalo Jeremy Renner Samuel L Jackson Terrence Howard Don Cheadle Scarlett Johansson Robert Downey Jr. Chadwick Boseman Bradley Cooper Ryan Coogler Kenneth Branagh Alfre Woodard Owen Wilson Sigourney Weaver Glenn Close Jeff Goldblum Sylvester Stallone Laurence Fishburne Angela Bassett Mickey Rourke Jake Gyllenhaal Djimon Hounsou Academy Award Win Anthony Hopkins Gwyneth Paltrow Natalie Portman Taika Waititi Robert Redford Michael Douglas William Hurt Mahershala Ali Matt Damon Brie Larson Cate Blanchett Benicio del Toro Lupita Nyongo Jennifer Connelly Sam Rockwell Rachel Weisz

They did do this, but Tom used his connections with the bar and judiciary and his own actions to stall his clients to make sure that the statute of limitations would be about to run out before his clients could bring a cause of action or find themselves in front a sympathetic judge. He did that with the Prempro clients. I know that some of his clients who were time barred tried to get a class certified and were denied. Yeah, you can't give the funds to the clients because they'll never turn it over to their attorneys. Additionally when you're dealing with class action cases, there could be tons of plaintiffs with wildly different damages. Plaintiffs aren't equipped to handle that. Most attorneys aren't this crooked. If the money is turned over to an independent entity to hold in escrow until the lawyers fees are tallied and the individual settlement amounts are determined, that service costs money and does reduce the amount of money for the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs don't really understand all of these complexities.

How is Nick Cannon's dipshit ass about to be father for the 7th time? And 4th time since December 2020? Stop sleeping with him people!!! He's dumb and horrible. https://people.com/parents/fathers-day-2021-nick-cannon-expecting-4th-baby-this-year-with-alyssa-scott/

You need to trademark that. Seriously! Bethenny's on a cheater brand tear right now. Her cheater brand Apprentice was just canceled. She's got her Ageless by Ramona Bethenny wine. She's got a toaster oven in development. Sorry Sonja. And she's now selling a 5 pack of 8-inch cauliflower crust pizzas for $70. about 5 years too late to effectively ride the cauliflower trend. Probably used Adam's recipe. https://www.hsn.com/products/skinnygirl-5-pack-8-cauliflower-gluten-free-flatbread-p/10085317 She was happy to talk shit about everyone else's podcasts and then started her own. She told Heather that Yummie shouldn't get into jeans and Bethenny started selling Skinnygirl athleisure and jeans. Bethenny tried her hand at stand-up. Would anyone be surprised if Bethenny's stand-up starts incorporating some songs and starts ripping off the Countess and Friends. Because it's Bethenny and she can't share the spotlight, her cabaret show would be "Only Bethenny" or "Bethenny is All You Need."

Ronald Richards was Russell Armstrong's attorney.

My old firm represented a non-profit whose board and officers were completely derelict in their duties as the executive director embezzled AND mismanaged the organization. We'd remind them a couple of times a year what their bylaws and state law required them to do. It turned out that no one on the board had asked about or read a report or financial statement about non-profit in years. It was not looking pretty as the AG came after them. I actually left for a different job in a different state before it was resolved. The real problem with not treating your corporate officers, directors, and board duties seriously is the whole piercing the corporate veil issue. If a court finds that you've been operating a corporation as a sham or a cover, they'll remove your ability to use your corporation's limited liability protections and find you personally liable. There's a reason why Ken and Lisa were also found personally liable in Karina Bustillos' sexual harassment case. Ken and Lisa testified under oath that they didn't really know anything about the corporation (they created and were officers of) or how money worked (a slight exaggeration, but not by much). ln an active matter, there's no way a court would allow an attorney or firm to drop a client for optics. You wouldn't even attempt to petition for something that might suggest that. They really limit your ability to drop clients if representing them will cause a financial hardship for the attorney or firm and that's a real issue. The reality is that Erika has almost certainly started stonewalling her attorneys and/or being deceptive about things that are reported to the court and that's why they don't think they can work with her. It could be something as simple as her attorneys asking for her Bravo/Evolution contracts and payments, Erika taking forever to respond to them, being combative about why the attorneys need those documents, and turning the documents over to her counsel in a slow weird piecemeal fashion. All of which would lead you to suspect that something strange is happening with Erika's finances and records even if nothing was. And if you're starting to distrust your client that much, it will probably start to show in your communications and interactions. It will just generally poison the attorney client relationship. However, Erika could also be like Teresa and she's busy hiding money and assets away. I suspect she is because she decided to proceed with her Vestaire sale after the news about Girardi Keese came out. Furthermore, I did some rough math and there should be $3 - $5 million left from that $20 million loan. Like even if you assume she spent lavishly on everything to make Erika Jayne possible, she'd actually have had to spend astronomically to go through all of that money that quickly.

Ruth Madoff actually worked as a bookkeeper early on when Bernie started his firm. She was also a director. But it seems like she hadn't been an active participant in the firm for decades. Teresa's downfall was less Joe's initial crimes, but that she and Joe lied and hid assets in their bankruptcy proceedings, despite being warned by their attorneys not to do so. She might be ignorant of Joe's initial crimes, but she doubled down on criminality when given the opportunity to be truthful. Erika's attorneys petitioning to be removed suggests something similar might be happening. It sounds like Erika is refusing to communicate with them and/or they have some suspicion that she's lying to the bankruptcy court or hiding assets.

So this show is probably canceled because Bethenny just "left" her MGM Development Deal. https://people.com/tv/bethenny-frankel-ended-business-deal-mgm-mark-burnett/

The story might have been ridiculous, but the police didn't really put in any effort to investigate it. Law enforcement ignored every bit of evidence that contradicted their theory of the case. If it that theory can't withstand a little bit of scrutiny, then maybe there's little to no reason to believe it. They put the phone on airplane mode, refused to perform a rape examination, and they seemingly never investigated where the calls from the kidnapper were coming from. If the kidnapping had been fake and they'd done their due diligence, the police would probably still be on 20/20 or Dateline. Except they'd be talking about this case where 2 nutjobs tried create their own version of Gone Girl. This just highlighted police laziness.

"Legal counsel" is not synonymous with "lead attorney". Legal counsel is all of the things done for your client, firm, or entity in that jurisdiction that are permissible duties and tasks for the practice of law. Legal counsel includes research, drafting documents, and reviewing records. It's not just going to court and meeting with clients. I think there's also this assumption that Eboni wasn't an active part of part of legal representation for the firm's clients. We don't know if Eboni sent memos on to the lead attorney about legal strategies and arguments for cases. She probably did. Most junior associates do at one point in their careers. She may have led a meeting, but we don't know because we weren't there. She might been much more involved at developing legal strategies as a junior associate at a small firm or not at all at a big firm. Even if she didn't, all of the research, writing, and reviewing is a fundamental part of legal practice and providing legal counsel. So it's not a lie or dishonesty. It's accurately stating what she did. That also depends on the size of the firm. At a small firm, 10-15 or fewer, there's a decent chance you'll get into the courtroom sooner rather than later. As firms get closer to 50 attorneys or more, I've found that it's harder for new attorneys to get that courtroom experience. I don't know how big the firm was where Eboni worked, but it's entirely possible that it was big enough that courtroom experience was a long ways off. It's also possible that Eboni jumped ship because she didn't like the vibe at the firm. I know far too many places like that where people didn't realize that the firm culture was toxic. I interviewed at a medium sized firm where they literally sexually harassed me in the interview. The only woman on the interview panel had a look of terror on her face when that started up. She had to stealth email an admin to make up an excuse to rush in and end the interview early. She was one of those people who realized that the place sucked, but didn't have the freedom to jump ship. She walked me out and warned me about how screwed up the firm was; they couldn't keep many female or minority attorneys because it was a drunken fratty hell with close ties to people in politics for those attorneys to feel comfortable making complaints, so they just left. I'm not saying that Eboni's old firm was like that. It could have been as simple as not being much of a drinker and the preferred firm bonding activity is a happy hour. I just think it's strange to make weird assumptions that Eboni is lying or untrustworthy based on not just nothing, but less than nothing.

Junior lawyers assisting, doing research, and playing second fiddle to more senior attorneys is literally how the vast majority of legal practice works at big and small firms, inside counsel, and working at a government agency. It's also why there are still a couple of states that allow people to apprentice with a lawyer in lieu of getting a JD. Equating it to being a glorified paralegal or just doing grunt work fundamentally misunderstands how the profession works. And that also explains why Eboni might have left the firm to join the public defenders office. The PDs office in most jurisdictions is so under-resourced that most young attorneys are almost guaranteed to get trial experience as the lead very quickly after starting work there. If she wanted trial experience, Eboni might have gone to work for the PD for that exact reason. Why isn't Eboni working as a "lawyer"? Because loads of us don't. Some people don't like typical law practice. Some people never intended to get into a typical legal practice (me for example). Sometimes people fall into career options that they like more. I've worked in policy and research for almost my entire career. Loads of people with JDs are journalists, TV personalities, and writers. Loads of JDs work in finance, business consulting, conflict resolution and mediation, human resources, policy and research, academia, and lobbying. There is nothing fishy about having a JD, but not working as a "lawyer." Many people choose atypical career paths for their degrees. There's nothing fishy about Ken Jeong having an MD, but choosing to work as an actor and comedian. Robert Parker of the wine ratings has a JD and gave up legal practice fairly early in his career to focus on wine criticism. There's nothing strange about Eboni having a JD, but choosing to work on TV like so many other people with JDs before her (Star Jones, Harvey Levin, Nancy Grace, Ben Stein, Sunny Hostin, Megyn Kelly, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Dan Abrams, Hill Harper, Bob Woodruff, David E. Kelley, William Sanderson, Brad Meltzer, and Howard Cosell).

Noel went to Maryland Institute College of Art. Niece Nicole competed on season 1 of Work of Art, the art competition show on Bravo. https://www.gq.com/story/this-week-on-work-of-1

This show always reminds me that law enforcement in the US has almost zero interest in prevention or harm reduction. How many times do people have to keep going to the police to warn the police that things are about to pop off? And nearly every time the police are like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. We need to completely reconceptualize policing and how people access social services in the US.

I almost never pay attention to Deuxmoi, but I think this is actually true. It seems as if the show has taken some pains to hide Milokssy's background because it doesn't really fit The Big Shot's mostly bullshit narrative. Milokssy's own website suggests that it might be true: Pam Levine was at Fox for 15 years before joining HBO in 2011. She left HBO in 2016 and went back to Fox. She got pink slipped in 2019 when Disney bought much of Fox's assets. She's been unemployed since then. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamela-levine Courteney Monroe left HBO in 2011 and has been with National Geographic since then. Now, I wonder if HBO had Milokssy monitoring this obviously troubled production both because of the COVID-19 delays and Bethenny has proven herself more erratic than most realized. Maybe they realized that they hadn't cast anyone half competent or capable of handling Bethenny and they dragged Milokssy in, especially because COVID-19 restrictions probably wouldn't have allowed them to reopen casting.

Bite your tongue. There's an icy quality that they both share, but Martha is an entirely different sort of bad parent from Little Kathy. Little Kathy is lot like Big Kathy; she's almost as dangerously exploitative as Big Kathy. I don't know how she managed to be so blasé about Conrad's worsening behavioral problems and him continuing to spend time with the same person she claims ruined Paris' life (Rick Salomon). Martha is withholding and demanding, but she would have never let the Paris or Conrad situation happen. Martha is also inherently smarter than Little Kathy. Little Kathy is just the smartest and most calculating of Big Kathy Dugan Avanzino Richards Catain Fenton's daughters which isn't all that smart in the grand scheme of intelligence.