Girardi Convicted, Focus Turns to Failed Firm’s Other Attorneys

Girardi Keese attorneys knew the firm was collapsing in 2020 as Thomas Girardi‘s theft of client money was coming to light—and one former firm lawyer clawed for its most lucrative cases.

A group met in a parking garage, behind the firm leader’s back, to speak with former Girardi Keese lawyer Robert Finnerty, Girardi’s secretary revealed from the witness stand during her former boss’s Los Angeles trial. Finnerty at the time was lobbying for cases—including thousands of the firm’s lucrative Porter Ranch matters—to come to Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo, where he worked.

ACTS and Girardi Keese struck a deal to transfer the cases in November 2020, just weeks before Girardi’s firm was hauled into involuntary bankruptcy.

Now, with Girardi’s Tuesday conviction for misusing client money, focus is shifting to the lawyers at his failed firm who didn’t raise public alarm over Girardi’s behavior—even though his excuses for delaying payout of those funds were so fishy that even a junior associate freshly out of law school knew to raise internal flags and quit.

Though it’s common practice for lawyers to bring major cases with them when they change firms, the way Chicago court filings show Finnerty moved to draw Girardi Keese clients to his new practice is “an eyebrow-raiser,” said Los Angeles personal injury attorney David Ring.

On Nov. 30, 2020, Chicago attorney Jay Edelson, who was working alongside Girardi Keese to represent the families of victims of the 2018 crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max, called Finnerty. Edelson had been pressing Girardi to stop withholding client settlement funds. He got Finnerty’s name from then-Girardi Keese attorney Keith Griffin, whom Edelson recalled as saying that Finnerty would “be acting as like a de facto trustee who would help everyone get paid.”

During the call, memorialized by Edelson in an email which appeared in a Chicago evidentiary hearing on a contempt motion, Finnerty allegedly told Edelson not to file a complaint against Girardi or Girardi Keese.

Finnerty said he could strike a deal with Girardi to get those clients paid, Edelson said during the hearing. He and Griffin never disclosed to Edelson that he used to work at Girardi Keese, according to Edelson’s email.

‘Raid the Firm’

“The conflict of interest is pretty obvious—that person was in the midst of it,” Ring said, referring to Finnerty. “They might be completely innocent of anything, but they’re still in the middle of it all.”

Finnerty in a same-day response in 2020 denied Edelson’s accusations of “self-dealing,” saying he was only attempting to swiftly return money to the clients. He wrote that Edelson misstated the conversation.

Edelson sees what was happening at Girardi Keese in late 2020 differently.

“Instead of shouting the truth from the rooftops, so many were instead completely opportunistic—doing everything they could to keep things quiet while drawing salaries and charging the firm’s AmEx, and then, when the writing was on the wall, attempting to raid the firm as the ship sank,” he told Bloomberg Law last week.

Finnerty is one of four former Girardi Keese lawyers who—along with Lira, Griffin, and Christopher Aumais— were identified during Girardi’s August criminal fraud trial as targets of a criminal investigation.

The lawyers’ names were used frequently during the trial, although none of them took the witness stand. The exact basis for the target letters sent to the lawyers remains unclear. None of the men responded to multiple requests for comment, except for Griffin, who declined to comment, according to his attorney Ryan Saba. Lira, who was indicted with Girardi by a federal grand jury in Chicago, has entered a plea there of not guilty.

Porter Ranch Fight

The clash over who would get to litigate the firm’s most lucrative cases—particularly over the Porter Ranch gas leak, which would ultimately settle for $1.8 billion—started before the firm shut down.

The cases against Southern California Gas Co. and its parent company, Sempra Energy, date back to 2015, when thousands of residents were sickened as an underground storage well exploded and leaked gas into LA’s Porter Ranch area for more than 100 days. Girardi Keese teamed up with Frantz Law Group and filed for more than 8,000 leak plaintiffs in California state court.

The cases were still pending when Girardi Keese unraveled. The bankruptcy trustee determined Frantz would continue its representation, sharing fees withthe estate. But ACTS, which had obtained a client list, began sending letters to Girardi Keese clients, presenting itself as a stand-in for the now-bankrupt firm, saying it would take on the cases.

More than 500 litigants called and emailed Frantz Law Group, some expressing anger, concern, and confusion about the ACTS firm and how it obtained their information, the firm’s attorneys said in court filings.

“I want them fired for their sneaky email and you guys to continue with my case,” one client said.

ACTS attorneys defended its actions, saying hundreds of clients would be “unrepresented and deadlines to be blown.”

Ultimately, ACTS represented a few former Girardi Keese clients and the bankruptcy estate recovered at least $25 million in attorneys fees.

Girardi Keese Attorneys Move on

After Girardi Keese collapsed, Griffin didn’t move to ACTS—he went to work for a firm called Dordick Law Corp.

That firm, “in a step nearly too absurd to believe,” bought and used the building where the Girardi Keese firm used to operate, according to a complaint filed by Edelson attorneys in California state court in 2022.

“Thus, from the very same office, Griffin went on to do what he evidently does best: intentionally concealing information from clients to paper over ethical breaches (at the least) to benefit himself and his employer at their expense,” the attorneys said in court documents.

Edelson attorneys pursued information about the file of a one-time Dordick client alleging he hadn’t received his entire settlement because he was being fraudulently overcharged attorney fees. The client wasn’t brought from Girardi Keese but the excuses were familiar, the complaint said. “Dordick evaded and levied every excuse known to man short of the dog eating his homework” to avoid producing documents for weeks.

“The parallels to how the Girardi Keese scheme operated—evasion, delays, even blaming those delays on a missing ‘bookkeeper'—are incredibly alarming,” the attorneys wrote in a 2023 second amended complaint in California Superior Court, Los Angeles County.

Griffin’s attorneys in a demurrer said the complaint failed to show facts of Griffin’s involvement in the alleged scheme, saying much of the activity in the case happened before Griffin was employed at the firm. Dordick’s attorneys in a demurrer said “the allegations are a sham and intended to inflame the reader.”

The case ultimately settled. Griffin no longer works at Dordick.