Tom Girardi was a high-powered attorney and co-founder of Girardi & Keese, a law firm in downtown LA. He was known for being the first attorney ever in the state of California to win $1 million dollars for a medical malpractice case. Other notable cases Girardi handled include against Lockheed Martin Corp., Pacific Gas & Electric Co, Boeing 747, and several major Hollywood movie studios.
In the suit against Pacific Gas & Electric, he was able to garner a $460 million dollar payday to the 650 residents of Hinkley, California that got diagnosed with cancer (among other diseases) from drinking contaminated water that was leaking from their gas station. The general sentiment of Girardi's practice was that he was for the everyday people and was there to help them when tragic situations like this arose.
In 2003, Girardi was inducted in the Trial lawyer hall of fame by the California State Bar and later became the President of the International Academy of Trial lawyers.
After decades of being hailed as a top attorney, an admiral member of the community, a federal judge froze Girardi's assets in 2020, alleging that he had "misappropriated at least $2 million in client funds that were due to the families of those killed" by the Boeing 737 plane crash in Indonesia. This was just the start of a slew of lawsuits and controversies regarding his shady practices and embezzlement of client funds for his own personal use. He was even sued by his law firm partners.
While Girardi ultimately went on to being disbarred in California, this caused quite the stir within the legal profession. This is because, despite everything coming to a public head in 2020, the California Board of Bar Examiners had received information and over 200 complaints about Girardi's unethical practices for decades. The Chair of the California Bar Board of Trustees issued a statement on the matter admitting to serious failures and pledging to never let such a situation occur again.
The legal profession has succeeded in remaining self-regulating when other professions have not because it is generally very good at monitoring and addressing misconduct by its members. Cases like this, if they become too common, may cause legislatures to seek to regulate lawyers the way they regulate other professions.
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