McCourt Divorce Case Testimony Reveals the Unraveling of a Marriage
In what has already been a contentious and at times outlandish high-powered divorce, the principal figures in the McCourt divorce case are now actually taking the stand to testify.
The testimony, from Frank McCourt himself as well as advisors on each side of the case, has shed some light on the breakdown of a marriage that lasted almost three decades, as reported by The Los Angeles Times.
One of the biggest bones of contention, determining ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball franchise, was put under scrutiny in the latest round of testimony. A lawyer who worked with Frank’s wife Jamie discussed some of the negotiations that surrounded ownership.
One of the key days in the saga of the team ownership was May 12, 2009. On that day, Frank decided not sign a document that would have given Frank and Jamie shared ownership of the Dodgers. After Frank informed her of the decision, Jamie called her lawyer, Leah Bishop, who had drafted the document.
Bishop responded to the news by providing two options for Jamie in her opinion. Two tools, as she called them: “a civil conversation with Frank or a nuclear bomb.”
Two months after that day in May, the couple separated.
These details came out as Bishop testified in the divorce case. Bishop tried to stress what she had intended to express to Jamie when she said that. She meant, according to her testimony, that to let conversation break down would be to invite conflict.
“If you don’t start talking to each other,” Bishop said, “everything is going to explode. It was going to be like a nuclear wasteland.”
This was the second day of the divorce trial. It’s a trial that is likely to break records in California over how much money is at stake, and the high profile of some of those assets, and particularly of the high profile Los Angeles Dodgers.
In a storyline fit for Hollywood, two big-time trial lawyers will be cross-examining witnesses with big money and big brands hanging in the balance.
On Jamie’s side, her lawyers are working to show that Frank McCourt was not looking for something in return after signing an agreement with Jamie that protected their homes from creditors.
Frank’s lawyers, in the meantime, are trying to unpack how the couple separated out their business assets and kept them in Frank’s name, and that Jamie didn’t put any stake in the Dodgers franchise, no did she sign the indemnity forms that baseball owners must sign.
Part of the early testimony involved the Dodgers, and whether or not Jamie understood or agreed that no part of the team was not in her control. Frank’s attorney, for example, had documents he thought showed that Jamie had identified the Dodgers as Frank’s separate property.
Bishop went on to describe some interactions she had with Frank, in which she said she thought there were times she had witnessed that he had not been nice to her. This included an incident she described in which he had yelled at Jamie in front of other people.
“That was not a nice thing to do,” Bishop said.
Of Jamie’s role as CEO of the Dodgers, Bishop said Frank “was fine with her being referred to as the most powerful woman in baseball, but not if she really believes it.”
