To my knowledge he only wrote one book about it, and since he had a $30m+ judgment against him by the family of one of his victims the moment the book went through a publisher they successfully filed suit to take over the book and were then the beneficiaries of all of its profits (they also acquired editorial control over the work, and used it to change the title and add some stuff to make it much more condemnatory of OJ.) So OJ did not directly make any money off of his case, and in fact spent a lot of money on attorneys.
The judgment against OJ in civil court effectively prevented him from doing much to earn income, because any income he earned in addition to what he already had could immediately be seized to pay toward the judgment. In many jurisdictions (including the one OJ’s home was in) your primary residence has special protections from legal judgments, as do retirement accounts. OJs NFL retirement earnings were around $400k/year and his home in Florida was fairly nice, so he lived a good, easy life. But any ability to get really wealthy was denied to him because the judgment basically gave the victim’s family the right to go after almost any other income he could dream up a way to earn.
I was actually shocked he wrote the book, you’d think at some point in that process someone would have told him the proceeds could be seized to pay the civil judgment against him.
But Simpson was found liable in a civil trial, which is why the lien applied. That hasn’t happened to Anthony, and since she was acquitted in the criminal trial, the Son of Sam laws do not apply to her. She’s free to sell photos, do interviews, write a book, etc.
Nope - because the incident in question happened before the bankruptcy filing, the Discharge will cover that as well. It is not uncommon for people facing a large civil judgment to file bankruptcy to get rid of it. A drunk driving incident resulting in death is specifically not dischargable, along with fraud (but you must prove it in the BK court), but something like this should be covered by the Discharge.
Plus, the automatic stay of proceeds kicks in as soon as you file, so this lawsuit will never get to the Judgment stage, so no lien will attach.
She assigned her publishing rights to Baez to offset a portion of his fee.
As far as he goes, he’ll do just fine even if he never recovers a dime of the fee owed to him. Before the Anthony trial he was an utterly unknown general practice attorney (and in fact was briefly disbarred). Now he has so much work coming in he was able to hire an associate.
Also excepted are judgments involving an “a wilful and malicious injury to person or property”. In Tinker v. Colwell (193 U.S. 473), the leading case, that was held to include adultery. Might include defamation, too; Florida’s defamation statute has a punitive damage provision.
Yes. I was using “publishing rights” as an (incorrect) shorthand. What she actually did was agree to waive privilege for matters relating to the representation for media purposes. Not sure if it covers all media, but since Baez is writing a book on the case I assume that was one of them.
The deal was approved by Judge Perry after Anthony filed her indigency petition and asked the state to pay Baez’ fee.
As an executory contract, Casey might be able to end the contract. Her story is now an asset of the bankruptcy estate. It would be funny if Baez loses this potential income stream as well.
