Prosecutors at the State Bar of California have filed discipline charges against a former senior attorney with the law firm of disgraced ex-lawyer Tom Girardi. The attorney is accused of concealing details of a $53-million settlement from one of his clients.
The charges against Robert Finnerty, 70, center on his role as the lawyer for Joseph Ruigomez, a Bay Area man who suffered devastating burns across most of his body in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion.
Finnerty and Girardi represented Ruigomez as well as Ruigomez’s parents and sister in a lawsuit filed against Pacific Gas & Electric.
According to charges filed in State Bar Court that were disclosed Monday, Finnerty in 2013 negotiated the $53-million settlement with PG&E without the Ruigomez family’s knowledge or approval, and the family was not informed of the total settlement amount at the time.
Rather, they were told the settlement was far lower: that after attorneys’ fees, Joseph would receive $5 million, his parents would receive $1 million, and his sister would receive $250,000. The family only saw the signature pages of the settlement agreement, not the full document, according to the charges.
The case against Finnerty marks the latest effort by the State Bar of California to seek accountability against those affiliated with the now-shuttered Girardi Keese law firm. Girardi has been disbarred; another lawyer faces a 15-month suspension; and a third attorney faces multiple misconduct charges.
Finnerty and his attorneys did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Prosecutors outlined the efforts by the Ruigomez family to get basic information from their lawyer about a settlement brokered in their name, then collect the full amount they were owed.
Although PG&E had wired the money to Girardi in January 2013, the Ruigomez family did not learn of any money being available for several months. In May 2013, Ruigomez’s mother, Kathleen, emailed Finnerty asking for an accounting of the settlement.
“I have not received anything actually as far as documents in the case, except for the signature pages,” she wrote. “It’s been months,” adding, “When should I get some documents like the settlement agreement … ?”
It was not until more than a year later, on Oct. 30, 2014, that Girardi sent records disclosing that a $25-million annuity had been purchased in Joseph Ruigomez’s name, as well as other records that revealed the settlement.
The family pressed for their money.
Finnerty and Girardi told the Ruigomezes that the funds were held in an interest-bearing account, although such an account did not exist. From 2016 to 2019, the Girardi Keese firm intermittently sent so-called interest payments to the Ruigomez family but neither transmitted the full settlement nor provided a copy of the settlement agreement.
There’s no allegation that Finnerty himself misappropriated the settlement. But the filing blames him for not disclosing that at least $6.6 million was misappropriated, based on balances in the Girardi Keese trust account.
“Even though [Finnerty] knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, that the Girardi firm had misappropriated the Ruigomezes’ settlement funds, he never informed the Ruigomezes that the Girardi firm had misappropriated their settlement funds,” the State Bar’s prosecutors wrote.
Finnerty left Girardi’s law firm about 2019 and began working for the Encino law firm Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo, or ACTS Law. That year, the Ruigomez family sued Girardi in Superior Court and accused him of misappropriating the funds. Months later, Girardi signed an agreement to pay $12 million, but after $1 million was sent, the payments stopped.
The Ruigomez family escalated efforts to collect in 2020, putting a lien on Girardi’s home and issuing subpoenas to his accountant, his then-wife — Erika Girardi — and his personal travel agent. They also forced Girardi to testify under oath about his finances, eliciting an extraordinary admission from him at a time when he still enjoyed a reputation as a wealthy and influential lawyer.
“At one point, I had about 80 million or 50 million in cash. That’s all gone,” Girardi testified in the summer of 2020. “I don’t have any money.”
Within months, Girardi’s firm imploded and he was referred for criminal investigation. Last summer, a federal jury convicted Girardi of four counts of wire fraud for embezzling millions of dollars from his law firm’s clients, including the Ruigomez family, then using the funds to underwrite a lavish lifestyle.
His sentencing has been delayed as a judge evaluates whether Girardi should be sent to a medical facility or federal prison.
During the criminal trial, a federal agent testified that Finnerty was among a handful of former underlings of Girardi who were warned by federal authorities that they were targets in an ongoing fraud probe, The Times previously reported. The status of that probe is unclear.
