'Real Housewives of Beverly Hills': Erika Jayne Named in Multi-Million-Dollar Lawsuit
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne and her company EJ Global LLC were named in a $2.1 million lawsuit filed on Thursday. According to legal documents obtained by PEOPLE, Erika is accused of "aiding and abetting" her former husband Tom Girardi through his alleged embezzlement of funds through his law firm Girardi & Keese.
"The complaint is another misguided effort to blame Erika for the conduct of others in which she had no part," Erika's attorney Evan C. Borges said in a statement following the news.
"Erika has no law degree and never worked at or managed her former husband's law firm," Borges adds. "Whatever Mr. Girardi or others at his law firm did or said to the plaintiffs in this case, Erika had no knowledge or role in any of it. The focus should be on Mr. Girardi, his law firm, and anyone else who enabled what he did. Piling on Erika may generate publicity, but it's without any basis in reality."
The complaint comes from Manuel H. Miller and Kathleen Bajgrowicz's attorneys. Bajgrowicz is the mother of former NFL star Chuck Osbourne, who died in 2012 from repeated head trauma. The attorneys claim Erika "knew about the scheme" and was using the alleged illegal funds to pay for her "notoriously lavish lifestyle." Tom and Miller both represented Bajgrowicz in her suit against the NFL after her son's death and agreed to share the fees. Tom was supposedly responsible for dispersing the funds, but they claim Girardi "lulled Plaintiffs into believing that the funds could not be distributed to anyone until various issues were first resolved."
"Unknown to Plaintiffs, Girardi had already taken their money and breached his and the firm's fiduciary duty to distribute the funds to Plaintiffs," they write in the complaint. "Defendants knew that Plaintiffs were fraud victims but did nothing to protect them and instead prioritized their own financial gain at Plaintiffs' expense," the suit adds. "Defendants should be required to compensate Plaintiffs for the harm they have caused and should be punished for aiding and abetting Girardi's breach of fiduciary duty and their financial elder abuse of Plaintiffs."