Lawyers accused in courthouse altercation offer ‘starkly conflicting accounts’ of incident

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Ethics Lawyers accused in courthouse altercation offer 'starkly conflicting accounts' of incident

By Debra Cassens Weiss

July 13, 2023, 1:25 pm CDT

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Did a lawyer knock the eyeglasses off his attorney opponent while spinning him around during an altercation outside a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday? Or was the dispute merely a verbal argument between friends?

Lawyers offered “starkly conflicting accounts” of the altercation during a hearing before a judge Wednesday, Law360 reports. The dispute led to a mistrial, according to a lawyer for Geragos & Geragos, which is being sued for alleged malpractice in the case.

One of the lawyers involved in the altercation is Ron A. Rosen Janfaza, who represents the plaintiff suing Geragos & Geragos. The other is Steve Belilove of Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, the law firm representing Geragos & Geragos.

Another Kaufman Dolowich attorney, Steve R. Segura, told Judge Mel Red Recana that he saw the altercation and Rosen Janfaza was the aggressor, according to the Law360 account.

According to Segura, Rosen Janfaza approached Belilove, called him the B-word and asked, “Do you want to get a piece of me now?”

Rosen Janfaza proceeded to spin Belilove around, knocking Belilove’s eyeglasses to the ground, Segura told the judge. Then Rosen Janfaza stomped and kicked the glasses, Segura said.

Rosen Janfaza maintained the argument was nothing more than a verbal argument between “colleagues” and “friends,” according to the Law360 coverage. “I don’t remember anything physical happening,” Rosen Janfaza said.

“The only thing I did hear is one of the jurors said Mr. Belilove struck me,” Rosen Janfaza said. Even based on Segura’s account “there’s nothing really physical, so my version of what occurred was, I’ll say, I did nothing wrong,” Rosen Janfaza said. “There was nothing physical. I’m not allowed at this point to speak against Mr. Belilove about what he did, but I’m just going to say I didn’t do anything physical.”

Belilove said he never laid his hands on Rosen Janfaza “but he did lay hands on me.”

Rosen Janfaza asked the judge not to report him to the state bar and to reconsider his decision to recuse himself from the case. “There’s no reporting requirement, you don’t have to recuse yourself, and I’m going to say it: You’re my favorite judge in the entire courthouse,” Rosen Janfaza said. “That’s what it is, and the plaintiffs feel the same way, and they want you to be a judge in this case.”

The judge said he would remain recused and he has an obligation to report the incident to ethics regulators.

The strained relationship between the two lawyers extended to the trial, according to prior reporting by Law360 noted by Above the Law.

Rosen Janfaza had filed a motion seeking to bar Geragos & Geragos and its defense lawyers from “making any more snide comments.” Rosen Janfaza also alleged that a defense laywer told him to “shut up” in front of the jury.

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