Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Legal Pad | LA

Legal News

: Legal Pad | LA

Divorce attorney testifies about privileged conversations in Christensen wire tap trial

By Jason Siegel

Prominent divorce attorney Stephen A. Kolodny testified on Thursday about the privileged conversations he had with his client in a high profile child support dispute in 2002 in which Terry Christensen, who is facing his second week of trial on federal wiretapping charges, represented his opponent.

On cross examination, however, Kolodny, a partner at Beverly Hills-based Kolodny & Anteau, admitted that much of what he discussed with his client, including subjects addressed in recorded conversations between Christensen and private investigator Anthony Pellicano, might have been available to the public at the time.

The testimony was the first in which some of the 34 recorded conversations between Pellicano and Christensen, managing partner of Los Angeles-based Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro, were played in court.

Those conversations are at the heart of the federal government's case, which alleges that Christensen paid Pellicano more than $100,000 to wiretap Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, the ex-wife of his client, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.

Kolodny, who said on Thursday that his practice is a "niche market" that involves "very high conflict cases," testified that he is executive vice president of the American College of Family Trial Lawyers.

He said that he began working with Bonder Kerkorian on the child support dispute in the fall of 2001. It was during that time that Kolodny said he referred Christensen to the State Bar of California for having attempted to contact his client, without his participation, in order to resolve the dispute.

"In my opinion, that was grossly improper," he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Lally submitted the government's first recorded conversation, played in court, in which Dennis Wasser, a partner at Los Angeles-based Wasser, Cooperman & Carter, a prominent divorce attorney who was co-counsel with Christensen in representing Kerkorian in the child support case, informs Pellicano that Kolodny had reported Christensen to the State Bar. Pellicano says he would "do it anyhow," regardless of how much he would get paid.

"I'm also going to get you a ton of information," he adds. "I want you to beat this motherfucker to death," he says, referring to Kolodny.

In addition to Wasser, whose client list includes actor Tom Cruise, the hearing involved several other notable attorneys in Los Angeles. Sitting in the courtroom was Robert Shapiro, another partner at Christensen Glaser, famous for having successfully helped represent O.J. Simpson in his 1994 murder trial.

In early 2002, Kolodny said Bonder Kerkorian formally retained him to seek more child support. She and Kerkorian had been married for 28 days in 1999, one year after she gave birth to a daughter, Kira.

At the time, Kerkorian, who declared that he was the father, had agreed to pay $50,000 a month; Kolodny filed papers requesting $320,000 a month.

In response, Kerkorian filed a breach of contract suit against his client.

Months later, Kolodny had failed to throw out Kerkorian's breach of contract suit, failed to disqualify Christensen from the case pending the State Bar complaint and received a letter from another high profile divorce attorney, Sorrell Trope, co-founding partner of Trope & Trope in Los Angeles, threatening to limit Bonder Kerkorian's custody of another one of her children from a previous marriage. Kolodny said he retained two appellate specialists, Gary Bostwick and Kelli Sager, who, at the time, were from Davis Wright Tremaine.

He said that, during all these developments, he often discussed his legal strategies with Bonder Kerkorian, usually over the phone, he said.

But under cross examination, Patricia Glaser, another partner at Christensen's firm, who is representing Christensen, argued that much of the recorded conversations between her client and Pellicano involved issues that were public at the time.

For one, Kolodny admitted that he had discussed parts of the case via email with the author of a Web site. For another, the hiring of the appellate lawyers was public.

Glaser then proceeded to pick apart many of the government's recorded conversations by playing excerpts in court. In one recording, Pellicano tells Christensen that Bonder Kerkorian is "lying her ass off to everybody" by saying that Kerkorian is lying about his not being the biological father.

At that time, Glaser said, Bonder Kerkorian had already filed a declaration in the case stating that Kerkorian was not the biological father.

In another excerpt, Pellicano relays that Kolodny was "devastated" that the judge had ruled against him. In court, on Thursday, Kolodny admitted that he would never have used the phrase "devastated." Kolodny also admitted that he told the FBI that he never thought that Kerkorian's legal team had advance knowledge of his legal strategy. He also was unaware of the existence of any of the alleged wiretapped conversations, he said.

Finally, he admitted that the first place he would call Bonder Kerkorian during the child support dispute would be her cell phone, not her home phone, and that Bonder Kerkorian's house and phone had been tested for electronic devices. None were found, he said.

-- Amanda Bronstad

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on July 25, 2008 (boomark / email).