Celebrity defense attorney Mark Geragos, who has been in the limelight for representing Erik and Lyle Menendez, must pay $100,000 to a youth basketball coach for his role in a 2018 scheme to extort Nike, a Los Angeles jury decided Wednesday.
The coach, Gary Franklin, had contended in a legal malpractice lawsuit that Geragos and the now-disgraced and disbarred lawyer Michael Avenatti had bungled a potential $1.5-million settlement from Nike by pushing for a lucrative revenue stream for themselves.
The two attorneys insisted that in addition to the settlement with Franklin, the apparel company must hire them to conduct a confidential investigation for more than $20 million, or else Avenatti would publicly expose alleged misconduct in youth basketball that he gleaned from Franklin, according to Franklin’s suit.
The scheme ended with Avenatti’s arrest and 2 1/2-year prison sentence and Geragos briefly being considered an unindicted co-conspirator. Franklin asserted that it derailed his chances at a million-dollar payday, along with his reputation and livelihood.
After days of testimony in downtown L.A. in which Geragos took the witness stand, the verdict led both sides to claim victory.
The jury found that Geragos aided and abetted Avenatti, knowingly assisted in wrongful conduct and ultimately breached his duties as a lawyer, although it found that Franklin wasn’t harmed by Geragos. Trent Copeland, who represented Franklin, said the $100,000 award was “less substantial than we believe the evidence proved” but a win nonetheless.
However, the jury also concluded that Geragos had not defrauded or concealed information from Franklin and didn’t act against Franklin’s interests.
“We are gratified that the jurors saw through this lawsuit and found Mr. Geragos caused no harm,” said Sean Macias, who represented Geragos at trial.
Franklin was the longtime coach of California Supreme, a well-regarded youth basketball program in L.A. that Nike sponsored to the tune of $72,000 per year. After Nike halted its sponsorship contract with Franklin’s team in 2019, he turned for help from Avenatti, then at the height of his fame for representing Stormy Daniels in suits against Donald Trump.
After Avenatti learned from Franklin about potential misconduct in college recruiting, he cooked up a scheme. He would threaten to hold a news conference to reveal allegations of misconduct by Nike employees, unless Nike paid a settlement to Franklin and agreed to hire the two attorneys to conduct an “internal investigation” for $15 million to $25 million.
Franklin alleged that Geragos was critical to the scheme, boasting of having a “fantastic” relationship with Nike’s top lawyer. Within days, Geragos and Avenatti were meeting with Nike lawyers in Geragos’ New York office and threatening to expose Franklin’s information if Nike didn’t pay up.
“This is betrayal — a betrayal that shattered a man’s reputation,” Copeland, who represented Franklin, said in his closing argument. “When a lawyer commits fraud, when a lawyer betrays his fiduciary duty, when a lawyer stands by silently when his co-counsel negotiates against his own client, that lawyer is responsible for all the harm that follows.”
In his defense, Geragos countered that there never was a formal $1.5-million settlement offer from Nike, and that he never was Franklin’s lawyer in the first place. Instead, Geragos contended he acted as a mediator in the dispute between Avenatti and Nike lawyers, never speaking, meeting with or texting Franklin. There was no retainer agreement or engagement letter governing Geragos’ relationship to either Franklin or Avenatti, his defense attorney Macias said during closing arguments Wednesday.
“It’s almost like suing a concierge,” Macias said, sipping a bottle of yellow Gatorade. “At all times, all he was doing was connecting someone.”
Noting that Avenatti did much of the talking during the meetings in 2019 with Nike laywers, Macias summarized Geragos’ position as: “I put two guys together. I sat in the room. I drank a diet Coke. I was silent, and I got sued.”
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