LOS ANGELES – As jury deliberations began this month in the federal government’s illegal wiretapping case against celebrity sleuth Anthony Pellicano, lawyers at one Los Angeles law firm breathed a sigh of relief.
“We’re proud of having handled this so well,” said Norman Levine, managing partner at Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman & Machtinger, where two current lawyers and one former lawyer testified as witnesses during the nine-week trial. “People look at us and understand that a lot of what was suggested about us is not true.”
The firm took several measures to weather often harsh publicity generated by one of the more high-profile trials in Los Angeles this year. Members of its management committee fielded calls and often discussed the progress of the Pellicano case at meetings with partners and associates. On the eve of the trial, the firm used an outside public relations executive to respond to questions.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Pellicano and four co-defendants were hired to wiretap people involved in litigation.
The only lawyer to be charged in the case is Terry Christensen, managing partner of Los Angeles-based Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro, who is accused of paying Pellicano to wiretap the ex-wife of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. Christensen goes to trial 30 to 45 days after the Pellicano verdict.
At Greenberg, Glusker, no one faces charges. But eight current and former lawyers, including rainmaker Bert Fields, were potential witnesses in the case. Speculation swirled about how much the lawyers at Greenberg, Glusker knew about Pellicano’s illegal activity – particularly Fields, who admitted early on to being a subject of the investigation.
Greenberg, Glusker retained Brian Sun, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Jones Day, to represent the firm throughout the investigation. During the trial, the firm was referenced several times. Some witnesses, including Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey, testified that their lawyers at Greenberg, Glusker hired Pellicano.
But Levine downplayed the legal implications against the firm.
“The reality is the facts came out exactly as we expected them,” he said. “There was no evidence that any of our lawyers had any idea what Pellicano was doing.”
Sun also represented Fields, whose potential testimony generated substantial publicity during the trial, and Jill Cossman, chairwoman of the business and tax group at Greenberg, Glusker, who testified about applying for a trademark on the name of Pellicano’s wiretapping software.
Fields, who escaped criminal charges and potentially damaging testimony in the criminal case, still faces a civil action brought by producer Vincent “Bo” Zenga that accuses him, and Greenberg Glusker, of illegal wiretapping in a profits case over “Scary Movie.” That case is pending until the criminal trial wraps up.
Fields appeared to have replaced his original lawyer, John Keker, in the middle of trial after confusion over whether Fields would plead the 5th Amendment if called to testify. But Levine said that Keker, a partner at San Francisco’s Keker & Van Nest, represented Fields in response to potential criminal charges against him, while Sun represented him during his testimony.
Another lawyer, Patricia Millett, who is now a partner at Santa Monica-based Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert, testified about a document she received from Pellicano’s agency while working at Greenberg Glusker.
The third lawyer was Ricardo Cestero, a litigation partner at the firm who used to work for Pellicano. Marc Harris, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Chicago’s Mayer Brown, who represented Cestero, said that the legal implications against the firm were minimal. The bigger problem, he said, is “what’s the reputational hit, if any, the firm takes as a result of being implicated or mentioned in the context of all this wrongdoing in a criminal trial.”
Levine acknowledged that the negative publicity surrounding the case was predictable.
“We had expected the publicity would be widespread, and we suspected lots of speculation about what we would or wouldn’t say,” he said.
He and a few others on the management committee took calls and attempted to correct inaccuracies as the trial progressed. At the start of trial, the firm relied more heavily on an outside public relations executive. But there were no press releases or statements to its clients.
One client, Bill Straw, president of Blix Street Records, said he discussed the case only once with Greenberg, Glusker, which is handling its licensing rights dispute against the parents of singer Eva Cassidy. “It’s obviously bad publicity for the firm but didn’t have anything at all to do with anything they did with me,” he said.
Within the firm, the status of the investigation was discussed at monthly partner meetings and quarterly associate meetings. About 10 additional meetings addressed specific issues in the case.
But in the past two years, nearly 20 lawyers have left the firm – about one-fifth of its headcount. In early 2006, a dozen left to form Kinsella Weitzman; since then, several key partners have departed.
Few, however, said the Pellicano trial affected their decision. “The firm was resolute from the beginning that they hadn’t done anything wrong, and that’s how it proved out,” said Craig Wood, a real estate partner in the Los Angeles office of Foley & Lardner who left to broaden his practice.
Levine, while acknowledging that headhunters have called the firm’s lawyers on a daily basis, said about half a dozen attorneys have joined the firm.
Amanda Bronstad is a reporter for The National Law Journal, a Recorder affiliate based in New York.
