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Fred Goldman files $117M claim against O.J. Simpson's estate
Fred Goldman, father of murder victim Ron Goldman, sits in his home in Peoria, Ariz., on May 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)
O.J. Simpson is taken from the Las Vegas Police Investigative Services Division in Las Vegas in September 2007. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
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ByJeff Burbank/Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 26, 2024 - 6:00 am
Updated July 26, 2024 - 8:01 pm
Fred Goldman, who won a civil judgment against former NFL star O.J. Simpson over the 1994 slaying of his son Ron Goldman, is seeking $117 million against Simpson’s estate in Las Vegas where the one-time running back died on April 10.
Goldman, represented by Reno attorney Michaelle Rafferty, on Wednesday filed and signed a creditor claim in District Court in Las Vegas citing a 1997 judgment in Superior Court in Los Angeles that Goldman claims is valued at $96.3 million plus $20.6 million in accrued interest since 2022, court records show.
He requested the court have the two-year-old Los Angeles legal judgment “domesticated in Nevada to become a valid creditor claim against a Nevada estate” since a Nevada court denied Simpson’s motion to be relieved of the judgment amounting to $57.9 million in 2021.
Interest on the Goldman family’s wrongful death claim, more than a quarter century old, is growing at a daily rate of $26,402, Goldman stated in the three page-document.
Reached by phone at his home in Peoria, Ariz., Goldman said he remains dedicated to making Simpson pay, even beyond the grave, since a California jury in 1995 acquitted him of the brutal killings of Ron Goldman and Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson in Brentwood, Calif.
“He murdered my son!” Goldman said. “He never paid a penny, not one single penny.”
Goldman said that Simpson’s estate in Las Vegas is perhaps his family’s last hope to collect proceeds from a jury’s original 1997 civil award of $33.5 million that was renewed by California courts three times and now sits at $117 million including interest.
Simpson’s longtime Las Vegas lawyer Malcolm LaVergne, who has been outspoken about defending the estate after Simpson died, could not be reached Thursday.
Simpson died in Las Vegas of cancer at age 76 on April 10 after years of avoiding paying the judgment to Ron Goldman’s family members thanks to federal laws that protected his NFL player’s monthly pension from creditors.
LaVergne, in the days following Simpson’s death, flatly insisted that he did not want the Goldmans to receive any money from his client’s estate, but then walked back from that, stating that “I will deal with Fred Goldman’s claim in accordance with Nevada law.”
It is not clear just what Simpson’s estate is worth. LaVergne was named executor of the estate in Simpson’s will, which was filed in Clark County court on April 12 and placed his estate in a trust created in January.
Whatever assets remain, by Nevada law the trust would have to cover administrative, funeral and other outstanding costs before paying for judgments such as the Goldman’s.
Simpson was the beneficiary of $5 million from the Screen Actor’s Guild retirement fund from his years as a Hollywood actor, his pension from 10 years playing in the NFL paid him about $100,000 a year if he waited until age 65 to draw it and he would be eligible for monthly Social Security benefits in his 60s, according to an article on the CNN Money website in 2017.
However much Simpson was able to actually bank was unknown, complicated by his 2007 conviction for robbery and kidnapping — involving sports memorabilia he claimed was his at the Palace Station hotel — that landed him nine years in prison until his release from the Lovelock Correctional Center in Northern Nevada in 2017.
Simpson then hoped to be near family members by moving to Florida, but state officials there discouraged that and so he settled in Las Vegas, living large with a reputation as a generous tipper while hanging around in Summerlin-area eateries and bars.
He moved into a residence owned by a friend at the luxuriant, gated Red Rock Country Club and golfed there and at the Canyon Gate Country Club and Arroyo Golf Club.
In 2021, a judge ruled the Goldmans were to be awarded the modest money Simpson won — about $30,000 — in a suit against employees of the Cosmopolitan hotel-casino who told the gossip TV show and website TMZ that he “was drunk and became disruptive” at the hotel’s Clique bar on Nov. 8, 2017.
Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.
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