OJ's 'fake' Rolex returned

2007-10-06 10:45

Santa Monica - OJ Simpson is getting his fake Rolex watch back.

The timepiece, seized earlier this week by attorneys for Fred Goldman, was ordered returned to the former football star after it was determined to be a knockoff made in China.

Goldman had won a multimillion-dollar wrongful death judgment against Simpson, but the watch had so little value it fell under an exemption in the judgment excluding jewellery worth less than $6 075.

Goldman lawyer David Cook said his client would comply with Friday's order by Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg.

Cook said: "While we are clearly disappointed with the outcome, this tells us that collecting on this judgment, against this guy, is really tough."

Simpson says he paid $125

Cook had hoped the watch might be worth as much as $22 000, but an appraisal from San Francisco jeweller Shreve & Co concluded it was worth only about $100. Simpson had told his lawyer, Ronald Slates, he paid $125 for it.

Cook told Rosenberg he had a buyer willing to pay as much as $10 000 for the watch because it was Simpson's. But Slates argued that didn't mean Simpson was obligated to let Cook sell his watch, and the judge agreed.

Had he agreed to let Cook try to sell the watch, Slates said, Cook might have tried to go after other Simpson possessions of little value, claiming he could also sell them at a huge mark-up.

Slates said: "We don't want to create a precedent, where they can do that and we're forever faced with it."

Simpson was acquitted in a criminal trial of the 1994 murders of Goldman's son, Ron Goldman, and Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson.

After their families sued him for wrongful death, a civil court jury found him liable for the killings and ordered that he pay $33.5m.

Most of that judgment remained unpaid, although Fred Goldman recently won the rights to Simpson's book, If I Did It. The ghost-written account of how Simpson could have committed the murders was a New York Times best-seller.

- AP