Los Angeles, CA – A California judge on Tuesday chastised a lawyer representing former clients of Tom Girardi accusing the state bar of “rampant corruption,” telling the attorney over the phone that he is “nonplussed” as to why he attempted to skip the hearing on the bar’s motion to dismiss the case.
When the hearing began, attorneys for the bar and some of its individual employees who are defendants in the suit were present in the courtroom, while Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stuart M. Rice noted that an attorney for the plaintiffs was apparently headed for the airport on his way out of town.
That attorney, Daniel A. Osborne of Osborne Law PC, was on the phone, but the judge lectured him for not contacting the court to say that he planned to submit on the court’s tentative ruling, which went almost entirely against his client but allowed leave to amend the complaint.
“I spent my Memorial Day finishing this ruling,” the judge said. “It’s a tentative ruling, it says right on it, it’s a tentative ruling, and I am nonplussed as to why plaintiff’s counsel who worked so hard to write this complaint and oppose this demurrer would not be here.” The judge added that his staff told him Osborne had flown into Los Angeles for the hearing from New York.
