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Lindsay Lohan’s girlfriend Samantha Ronson gets sued

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Image by Rachel Kramer Bussel via FlickrFrom the Los Angeles Times:

Lindsay Lohan’s gal pal Samantha Ronson in big legal spat

The DJ is suing the lawyer she hired to stop rumors circulating about her and Lindsay Lohan. He sues back. It’s all fodder for blogs.

BY HARRIET RYAN | Los Angeles Times
December 11, 2008

On a summer day last year, Martin Garbus, a veteran attorney from New York, went to a beachside cafe in Santa Monica to meet a young woman looking for a lawyer.

Impressing prospective clients was not difficult for Garbus, whose resume reads like a history of the late 20th century. From Lenny Bruce’s pornography trial to the publishing of the Pentagon Papers to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the septuagenarian could boast a hand in some of the biggest civil liberties cases in the last five decades. He has dodged segregationists’ bullets in Mississippi, organized migrant workers with Cesar Chavez and helped craft the Czech Republic’s Constitution.

The woman sitting across from him that day was Ronson, a professional DJ recently thrust into the gossip blogosphere for her rumored romance with actress Lindsay Lohan. Ronson, 31, was enraged by some particularly nasty stories posted online about her relationship with Lohan and wanted to sue.

Ronson was irate, and on the recommendation of a friend, turned to Garbus. Then 72, he had a vaunted reputation — Fortune called him “one of the country’s most able 1st Amendment lawyers” last year — and a practice that included high-profile clients. At the time he met Ronson, he was representing Don Imus in a suit against CBS.

Difficulties emerged early on. In court papers in the malpractice suit, Garbus alleged that Ronson often didn’t return his calls or answer e-mails. She forgot meetings and kept him waiting. Garbus had represented many people whose fame was based on unquestionable achievement — Andrei Sakharov, Samuel Beckett, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Spike Lee — but Ronson, whose celebrity was rooted in titillation and limited largely to consumers of pop culture, often didn’t pick up the phone when he called, he alleged.

Regardless, the defamation suit progressed. Celebrity Babylon agreed to issue a retraction and an apology in exchange for Ronson dropping her claim, according to court filings in the malpractice suit. But that deal didn’t interest Hilton, no stranger to defamation suits.

“Perez Hilton doesn’t back down to anyone,” said Bryan Freedman, one of his attorneys.

“I’m tired of all this [stuff]. I wanna drop it,” she wrote.

“Will I be getting paid,” the lawyer replied.

There was no immediate answer.

In the end, neither Garbus nor Ronson attended the hearing. Lawyers from a local law firm hired by Garbus to assist in the case sat at the plaintiff’s table to hear the judge rule in Hilton’s favor. He dismissed the case and subsequently ordered Ronson to pay the blogger’s attorneys nearly $85,000.

Less than two weeks later, Garbus sued her in New York for close to $142,000 in fees and services. He later dropped that suit. In May, Ronson filed suit against Garbus in Los Angeles County Superior Court, contending that his incompetence had lost the case against Hilton and asking for damages in excess of $300,000. Among the allegations was that Garbus failed to fulfill his duties as her attorney because he was focused on collecting his fees.