(AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Wendy Chang on Wednesday ordered celebrity attorney Mark Geragos to pay more than $200,000 in attorney fees to the Los Angeles Times.
The $218,000 Geragos owes, first reported by Semafor’s Max Tani, stems from his failed libel suit against the LA Times over their coverage of a $37 million settlement for relatives of Armenian genocide victims. Geragos sued the paper and three reporters: Paul Pringle, Harriet Ryan, and Matt Hamilton (all Pulitzer Prize winners). Geragos’ settlement in two separate cases marked one of the first times a court acknowledged the 1915 Armenian genocide.
A 2022 report from the Times alleged, however, that some victims never received their compensation. That story was authored by Ryan and Hamilton.
Eventually, the California State Bar announced they were investigating Geragos and fellow lawyer Brian Kabateck. Those two had also filed suit in 2011 against the third lawyer involved in the Armenian genocide settlement, Vartkes Yeghiayan, accusing him of laundering some of the funds. That suit was settled in 2013.
In their announcement of an investigation, the California State Bar thanked the Times for their “excellent” reporting on the settlement.
Speaking with Courthouse News at the time, Geragos called Bar “fucking idiots.”
They’re waiving confidentiality on an investigation they haven’t done, in a matter that’s been investigated three times in the last 12 years by both inside and outside counsel,” he said.
Geragos has represented everyone from Michael Jackson to Jussie Smollett to Scott Peterson.
In March 2023, the celebrity lawyer filed his libel suit against the Times. He accused the Times of implying that he was responsible for the mismanagement of funds, but he argued he’d been cleared of wrongdoing in multiple investigations. The suit was shot down in August.
“I referred it to the D.A.’s office. Brian was the one who referred it to the State Bar. Brian and I wrote a letter to the Attorney General. I had not only State Bar investigators, but D.A. investigators looking into it; I gave them full, unfettered access to all of these documents. The people who the Times tried to lionize… all invoked the Fifth Amendment; I cooperated with every agency,” he told Los Angeles Magazine after filing the suit.
The suit also accused reporters of going on a “fishing expedition” to find dirt on Geragos and intentionally inflicting emotional damage.
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