Terry Christensen, the lawyer facing trial this week on charges that he hired celebrity sleuth Anthony Pellicano to wiretap his opponent in a child support case, obtained conversations between his opponent and her lawyers, including her lawyer's legal strategy in her upcoming deposition and her settlement proposals, according to a trial memo filed on Tuesday by federal prosecutors in the case.
At one point, Christensen, managing partner at Los Angeles-based Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro, called his opponent's lawyer, Stephen A. Kolodny, a partner at Beverly Hills-based Kolodny & Anteau, "the greediest piece of garbage that ever lived," according to transcripts of recorded conversations with Pellicano that are detailed in the trial memo.
Jury selection in the government's case against Christensen and Pellicano is expected to begin on Wednesday. The trial is estimated to last four weeks and could involve 40 government witnesses, according to the trial memo.
Christensen and Pellicano are each charged with conspiring to intercept wire communications. In addition, Pellicano is charged with intercepting wire communications, and Christensen is charged with aiding and abetting those interceptions.
Pellicano was convicted last month on 76 counts, including charges of racketeering and wiretapping.
According to prosecutors, Christensen retained Pellicano in a child support case on behalf of his client, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. In that case, Kerkorian's ex-wife, Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, had been seeking up to $320,000 per month in support for her 4-year-old daughter, Kira.
"The litigation," prosecutors said in the trial memo, "was bitterly contested with hardball tactics and questionable conduct the norm."
One of the central issues in the case was identifying Kira's biological father. Bonder Kerkorian married Kirk Kerkorian in 1999, one year after giving birth to Kira. The marriage lasted 28 days.
Much of the government's case relies on 34 recorded conversations between Christensen and Pellicano that took place over a period of two months in early 2002.
In one conversation, Christensen and Pellicano agreed not to involve anyone else on the wiretapping plan, including Dennis Wasser, a partner at Wasser, Cooperman & Carter, who was Christensen's co-counsel in the case.
After paying Pellicano a $25,000 retainer, Christensen promised him another $100,000 if he could identify Kira's biological father.
In another conversation, on the same day as a hearing in the case, Christensen asked Pellicano about a discussion Bonder Kerkorian had with one of her lawyers, Harlee Gasmer, regarding the judge in the child support case.
"So, oh, Harlee told her that the judge was questioning her credibility?" Christensen said.
"Yes," Pellicano responded. "So, so Lisa kept saying, well she says, then she thinks I am a liar, right? She thinks I am a liar? And Harlee goes, no she didn't say you were a liar. Cut it out. But she didn¹t believe you."
In another conversation, Pellicano told Christensen that, following several court rulings, Bonder Kerkorian attempted to fire Kolodny. "She was through," Pellicano said of Bonder Kerkorian. "She was through with everybody. She was yelling at everybody."
Later, Christensen noted that "we seem to be giving them some rugged weekends."
"Oh yeah," Pellicano responded. "And I¹ll tell you something, if, you, you know if we continue to, to, to get this kind of information with their strategy, we're, we're really killing them."
In the same conversation, Pellicano told Christensen how Kolodny intends to handle Bonder Kerkorian¹s upcoming deposition.
Specifically, Pellicano said, "the minute you start asking her these questions, he's going to shut it down. He's going to walk out. So that's what's going to happen on her depo date."
A bit later, Christensen said about Kolodny: "He is such an asshole."
"Oh," Pellicano responded.
"It's so much fun beating him, Anthony," Christensen said.
In another conversation, Pellicano, relaying Bonder Kerkorian's discussions with her attorneys about a potential settlement, said: "I think she'd take a hundred and twenty five grand now."
Christensen said: "The same old one twenty five?"
"Yeah," Pellicano said. "Right."
"Well, screw her," Christensen said.
In another conversation, Pellicano told Christensen about Bonder Kerkorian's conflicting discussions with the mediator and her own attorney.
"Everybody's against her, but she cuts the two people that are with her," Pellicano said. "She lies to both of them."
Christensen¹s lawyer, Patricia Glaser, a partner at his firm, referred calls to a spokesman, Mike Sitrick, who said: "The prosecutors' brief makes it clear that they have no wiretap of Lisa Bonder and are therefore forced to rely on the assertions of Anthony Pellicano, a man they have accused of over 100 felonies, and Lisa Bonder, a woman found to be untruthful by two separate judges. We remain confident that justice will prevail and Mr. Christensen will be exonerated."
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A Tale of the Tape in Christensen Wiretapping Trial
Jury selection in the government's case against Christensen and Pellicano is expected to begin on Wednesday
The National Law Journal
July 16, 2008
