Getting Justice the Geragos Way

Geragos was well-respected lawyer, but no more famous than other lawyers, until he said, the case of Susan McDougal, the then-fiancé of his current law partner, Pat Harris. “I think the trajectory took off when I represented Susan McDougal in the 1990s. That was a watershed turning point for me,” he said. McDougal had been one of the people entangled in the White Water case, along with Bill and Hilary Clinton previously, and thus a focus of a federal criminal probe. The case which brought her to Geragos involved her employer accusing her of embezzlement after McDougal’s move to Los Angeles. Geragos was able to clear her of all charges.

(Harris did not end up marrying McDougal. “I’ve got custody of Pat Harris and he is married to a wonderful woman named Carol Welsman, who is an internationally-known jazz singer,” Geragos joked.)

It is not only wealthy clients that can enlist the services of Geragos. He said that at any given time, his firm handles 10-12 pro bono cases.

Geragos has been rightly lionized in the Armenian community for his vociferous defense of Armenians not only in TV studios, but in courts. He and his firm were able to secure a $17 million win in 2005 against the French insurance giant, Axa. They had accused the company of benefiting from the deaths of Armenian policy holders during the Armenian Genocide.

“The Genocide litigation has been extremely personally satisfying to me and has certainly highlighted my career,” he noted.

More recently, Geragos, on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show, defended the community against the repeated accusations of Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and DzhokharTsarnaev.

“I think it’s humbling any time people tell me that [I make them proud]. Anytime I see an Armenian in the media or an Armenian accomplishing something, there is a certain pride I feel to be an Armenian as well,” he added.

Geragos said that he sees a shift in attitudes towards lawyers, one in which defense attorneys are treated more as heroes. “I think there’s been a definite change in the attitudes towards criminal defense lawyers over time. When I was growing up, you could read books like To Kill a Mockingbird and they were about noble defenders of the underdog. Now, not so much,” he said.

In the book, he refers to Nancy Grace, the former prosecutor and current TV host, who can target a defendant vociferously before all the evidence is in. “She has a following and her followers respect that kind of lawyer, and I think that has an impact on the people who watch her and subsequently think that’s the way you should approach a criminal,” Geragos explained.

One case in the book that he says drove Grace and other programs similar to her was that of Scott Peterson, the California man convicted of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn child. In the book, Geragos laments that so many untruths were circulated regarding Scott Peterson, who is currently on death row.

Mistrial is available from Amazon and all major book retailers. For more information on his law firm, visit www.geragos.com.