girardi

Girardi Keese Trustee Countersued by Former Firm Attorney

A former California State Bar president countersued the trustee for the Girardi Keese LLP bankruptcy estate in a fight over recovering fees for creditors of the defunct firm.

Howard Miller, an intellectual property attorney, countersued Chapter 7 trustee Elissa Miller claiming indemnity, including reimbursement for costs incurred under California Labor Code Section 2802. The law requires California employers pay for “all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer, even though unlawful, unless the employee, at the time of obeying the directions, believed them to be unlawful.”

  • “All of the conduct for which the Complaint seeks to impose liability upon Howard Miller is conduct which occurred in the course and scope of his work at Girardi Keese and which was done exclusively to benefit Girardi Keese and with the express agreement and oftentimes at the express request of Girardi Keese,” the countersuit filed Aug. 11 said
  • Howard Miller was brought into Girardi Keese in 2002 and left at age 80 in January 2018, the filing said
  • The bankruptcy trustee sued Miller last January amid a slew
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California Bar Details 205 Complaints Against Tom Girardi

Tom Girardi speaks to the press in 2014 as a lawyer for Bryan Stow, a San Francisco Giants fan who was severely beaten during a 2011 Dodgers game.

The California State Bar announced Thursday that it has received 205 complaints about prominent lawyer Tom Girardi in the last 40 years, acknowledging in a letter to the public that the agency’s handling of them “brought to light serious failures in the State Bar’s attorney discipline system.”

“There is no excuse being offered here; Girardi caused irreparable harm to hundreds of his clients, and the State Bar could have done more to protect the public. We can never allow something like this to happen again,” wrote Ruben Duran, chair of the bar’s Board of Trustees.

The letter includes a summary of each complaint and its disposition, with 136 complaints received between Aug. 10, 1982, and Dec. 17, 2020. Another 69 were received after a petition was filed on Dec. 18, 2020, to force Girardi’s law firm Girardi Keese into bankruptcy.

Of the 205 complaints, 120 alleged violations involving client trust accounts. Those accounts are where lawyers keep client money, and they’re subject to strict regulations that the court-appointed trustee for

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