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Judge tells OJ: Stop spending!
20/01/2007 22:45 - (SA)
Los Angeles - A Los Angeles judge clamped
down on OJ Simpson's spending on Friday, some two weeks after
another judge froze money the ex-football star earned from his
aborted book and TV deal about the murders of his ex-wife and
her friend.
Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg issued a limited
restraining order prohibiting Simpson from spending royalties
or otherwise manoeuvring funds from any past deals, including
media, books and magazines, until a hearing on February 20.
The order does not apply to the advance Simpson received
for his quasi-confessional book If I Did It.
Earlier this month, US District Judge Manuel Real
temporarily froze that money following a separate lawsuit filed
in December by the father of murder victim Ron Goldman.
The amount of the advance was never disclosed, but
attorneys for Goldman's father, Fred, have put it at around $1
million.
Act of defiance
Simpson, who parlayed his fame as an athlete into a career
as an actor and television pitchman, was acquitted of the June
12 1994, murders of Goldman and his ex-wife, Nicole Brown
Simpson.
A civil court jury found him liable for the deaths and in
1997 ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages to the murder
victims' families. But little of that judgment has been
collected, and Simpson has vowed never to voluntarily pay the
award.
"(Simpson) just refuses to come to grips with his financial
responsibility," said attorney David Cook, who represents Fred
Goldman. "It reaches the level of defiance."
Goldman's attorneys say Simpson was paid the $1 million for
If I Did It through a shell corporation, Lorraine Brooke
Associates, which they say was created to avoid paying the
judgment.
Simpson has said that he was paid much less than $1 million
for the book and that he already used his earnings to pay
bills. Rosenberg's order, which stems from the original
judgment, allows Simpson to continue paying necessary living
expenses.
Controversy over the book, billed as Simpson's hypothetical
account of how he would have committed the murders, prompted
News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch to scrap the book and an
accompanying Fox television special in November.
The Simpson book deal and television interview were
brokered by maverick publisher Judith Regan, who was fired from
her HarperCollins imprint, ReganBooks, about a month later amid
accusations of anti-Semitism.
Lawyers for Goldman added publisher HarperCollins, a
division of News Corp, to the federal lawsuit against Simpson
on Tuesday.
- Reuters
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South Africa
