On November 3, 2022, the State Bar of California published an open letter and disclosures regarding Thomas V. Girardi closed cases.
Girardi is a former attorney and co-founder of the now-defunct Girardi & Keese, a downtown Los Angeles law firm. He was the subject of numerous complaints to the California State Bar. Despite this, Girardi’s bar license was untarnished since he allegedly had improper relationships with bar officials and lacked malpractice insurance. In June 2022, the California Supreme Court disbarred Girardi and ordered him to pay $2,300,000 in restitution.
In its open letter, the State Bar disclosed that Girardi was the subject of 205 attorney ethics complaints over the course of his four-decade career.
The letter reads:
“Over the past 40 years, the State Bar opened 205 disciplinary matters about Girardi. Of the 205 matters, approximately 120 involved allegations relating to client trust account violations. The remaining disciplinary matters involved various allegations ranging from failure to communicate with clients to failure to perform, as well as misrepresentations to courts and clients, among others. Of these 205 disciplinary matters, the State Bar received 69 complaints on or after December 18, 2020, when a petition was filed to force Girardi’s law firm into bankruptcy. Nearly 60 of those recent complaints alleged client trust account violations.”
According to the State Bar, Girardi’s disbarment was the result of three of the 205 disciplinary cases. Due to his disbarment, 64 more cases were subsequently closed. Girardi never received a State Bar disciplinary action that was made public prior to his disbarment. The State Bar said that they did not disclose more information about these cases because, by statute, it has confidentiality obligations. Even when confidentiality is waived, the law strictly limits what information can be shared.
The State Bar acknowledged that the handling of the Girardi matters brought to light serious failures in the State Bar’s attorney discipline system, failures that have contributed to a lack of confidence in the State Bar’s ability to carry out our core responsibility of protecting the public.
The letter states:
“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.”
To prevent something like this from happening again, the State Bar said that it has taken numerous decisive actions to improve the discipline system.
The State Bar states:
“Under the Board’s leadership, the State Bar has developed and implemented much-needed reforms to the attorney discipline system. We will continue to pursue these efforts to ensure the State Bar fulfills our mission to protect the public.
Among the important steps, we have taken thus far is the creation of the new Client Trust Account Protection Program, which was approved by the California Supreme Court last month. This program will be in effect at the commencement of the 2023 annual license renewal cycle. The program will empower the State Bar—for the first time—to require licensed attorneys to report information about all of their client trust accounts annually, as well as provide the State Bar with new tools to enhance accountability and oversight of client trust accounts and deter misconduct. The Program includes resources and tools to assist licensees in complying with the new requirements.”
A copy of the open letter can be found here.
