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Date: 10/24/03
Time: 12:54:31 AM
Remote Name: 198.81.26.105
Updated: 11:33 PM EDT Judge Tosses Ex-Lawyer Bailey's $5M Fine By MIKE BRANOM, AP
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A federal judge has thrown out $5 million in penalties against disbarred attorney F. Lee Bailey, ruling that he did nothing wrong when he accepted payment from a client whose money the government claimed was tainted.
U.S. District Judge Anne C. Conway's order, issued Wednesday, vacated her own previous judgment that Bailey took $2 million in fees that should have gone to the government. She also set aside $3 million in punitive damages.
"It's good to have this off my back," said Bailey, once one of the nation's best-known defense attorneys for representing clients such as Patricia Hearst and O.J. Simpson.
Federal prosecutors sued Bailey for $2 million he and other lawyers received for representing television infomercial salesman William McCorkle and his wife on fraud charges in 1998. Prosecutors had claimed the government deserved the money by forfeiture because the funds came from a fraudulent business.
Conway had ruled in January that the money was tainted and therefore belonged to the government, but changed her mind after Bailey filed a motion in April asking her to reconsider.
Bailey argued that a trust fund from which he received money was the legitimate property of the McCorkles, and Conway relented.
The U.S. Attorney's office has not decided whether to accept the ruling, appeal or ask the judge to reconsider, spokesman Steve Cole said.
Bailey, 70, was disbarred in 2001 in Florida and in 2002 in Massachusetts for the way he handled 600,000 shares of stock owned by a convicted drug smuggler in 1994. Bailey spent about six weeks in federal prison in 1996 after refusing to turn over the stock, contending the government agreed he could keep some of the stock and that he did nothing wrong.
Unless he is reinstated, the earliest time he can reapply to the bar is in 2006, when he will be 73.
The McCorkles, convicted in 1998 on 151 counts of fraud, money laundering and false statement charges, are serving 24-year prison sentences.
10/23/03 23:31 EDT
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