FOLLOW THE MONEY: 25 Years after the O.J. Simpson Civil Judgment

If you’re new to Wells $treet, read my "Welcome" column to learn what I write about and why. And because I always aim to do better, I value your feedback in the comments or 📪 jane@janewells.com.

O.J. Simpson is having a pretty good year so far.

He’s busy on Twitter talking about football to his nearly 900,000 followers (including me).

His parole for a 2007 armed robbery and kidnapping conviction — a case that sent him to prison for nine years — ended in December. He’s now free to leave Nevada and live wherever he wants.

He’s nothing if not resilient. Based on his social media posts, Simpson appears to spend his days golfing inside the gated community where he resides in Las Vegas.

It’s a big change from 25 years ago this week, when things weren’t looking so great for O.J.

Sure, Simpson had been acquitted in criminal court of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. But on Feb. 4th, 1997, the jury in a civil lawsuit brought by the victims' families found him liable for the two deaths. The jury would award a total of $33.5 million in damages: $8.5 million in compensatory damages to Fred Goldman and Ron’s mother, Sharon Rufo, plus $25 million in punitive damages to the families of both victims.

I covered the verdict that night for CNBC’s “Rivera Live.” In fact, I’d been covering the Simpson saga since June 13, 1994, hours after the murders occurred.

At the time of his arrest in 1994, Simpson’s net worth was estimated at $11 million. But by 1997 — after two trials and some pretty hefty legal fees for Johnnie Cochran’s “Dream Team” — I would report that O.J.’s attorneys were claiming the one-time Hertz pitchman was $850,000 in debt.

Fast forward to 2022, and the original $33.5 million judgment is now worth twice that with interest. According to Newsweek, a court ruled last year that Fred Goldman alone is owed $58 million.

Goldman has collected only a fraction of that. TMZ cites court papers filed by Ron’s father that state Simpson has paid a little less than $133,000, a claim that Simpson’s attorney tells me is “a lie.”

“I don’t think you have much of a story,” Malcolm LaVergne told me during a brief phone conversation. He has been O.J.’s attorney since early last year. “Things have not gone well for Mr. Goldman,” he said.

He’s right.

Back in 1996, as the civil trial was kicking off, the Rand Corp. — located right across the street from the courthouse in Santa Monica — released a study on civil judgments. Critics had been complaining that juries were “out of control,” and the system needed reform. But the study concluded that any reform would harm the greater good:

“Juries decide cases totaling billions of dollars annually, and jury decisions set standards that influence social behavior. Equally important, jury verdicts influence the behavior of users of the civil justice system by helping to value future disputes and creating legal precedents.”

Well, one could argue that the civil judgment in the Simpson case did influence O.J.’s behavior, at least after the fact: It’s been very hard for the Goldmans to collect.

This case, perhaps more than any other, shows how difficult it is to recover damages, even when the person you’re collecting from has money. Simpson has pension accounts with the NFL and Screen Actors Guild that are reportedly worth millions, but pensions cannot be touched by civil judgments.

Over the years Ron’s father has retrieved a few things, like Simpson’s Heisman Trophy, which ESPN says was auctioned in 1999 for $255,000.

He also took possession of about $500,000 in other assets, though Goldman did not benefit from the 1997 foreclosure of Simpson’s Rockingham estate, because of the many liens against it to cover O.J.’s legal bills. (Side note: After foreclosing, the bank put the house on the market. I was allowed in for a tour. I was even shown the area where LAPD detective Mark Furman found the bloody glove — or where he planted it. Surreal. The new owner tore down the house and rebuilt it with a new street address.)

In 2007, a court granted Goldman the publishing rights to Simpson’s manuscript, “If I Did It,” where O.J. lays out how he might have committed the murders if he’d been the real killer. Goldman eventually published the book, telling “The Today Show” he had to for legal reasons, a decision that was criticized by Nicole’s family.

That same year, Goldman tried to take possession of memorabilia Simpson sought to retrieve at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room, the case that finally sent O.J. to prison.

More recently, Goldman petitioned the court for any money Simpson received in resolving a defamation lawsuit against The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas Hotel. O.J. had sued the Cosmopolitan after employees told TMZ he'd been banned from the hotel in 2017 for drunk and disorderly conduct. However, a judge ruled that no money had changed hands between the hotel and Simpson in resolving the case, so no money would go to Goldman.

“This is not a success for Mr. Simpson,” says O.J.’s attorney, Malcolm LaVergne. “It’s a failure of Mr. Goldman and his lawyers, who don’t follow the law in trying to collect.”

Ron Goldman’s mother took a different route. Sharon Rufo, Fred’s ex-wife, put her judgment up for auction eight years ago on judgmentmarketplace.com. At the time it was worth an estimated $24.7 million, but the website also offered a “buy it now” option for $1 million. Rufo sold the judgment to a Connecticut investor named Paul Dorsey for an undisclosed amount, and Dorsey has joined Goldman in pursuing Simpson in court.

I reached out to attorneys for both the Goldmans and Dorsey. When I called one of Fred Goldman’s lawyers, David Cook, he told me, “You’ve come to the right place.” He asked me to email his website, SqueezeBloodFromTurnip.com, with details about my interview request. I did, and then he declined to go on the record.

However, back in 2014, Kim Goldman, Ron’s sister, told me that going after Simpson was never about the money. “We were just thrilled that 12 people [in the civil trial] unanimously determined that he was the killer of Ron and Nicole. The rest was just paper.” By then, her father’s share of the settlement was thought to be worth $40 million with interest. “We’ve collected less than one percent of that.”

Meantime, Nicole Brown Simpson’s family has done little to collect damages on behalf of her children, who are now adults. Malcolm LaVergne says O.J. Simpson “has been a wonderful father through this time, and he’s been able to see his kids be very successful in life.”

But 25 years after a civil jury decided O.J. Simpson needed to pay for two deaths, not much has changed. “The Juice” is a free man, enjoying life, and now spending a lot of time on social media. Comments on many of his tweets show that despite the polarizing reactions to the not-guilty verdict decades ago, a lot of Americans think O.J. got away with murder.

Simpson’s attorney tells me he’s personally sad that two people are dead, but he’s adamant that his client didn’t do it. “This whole thing is just an exercise in futility and publicity for Mr. Goldman,” Malcolm LaVergne says. “The only person making money off this is me.”

Cover image: O.J. Simpson outside the courthouse during his civil trial/Vince Bucci, Getty Images

I’d like to hear your thoughts, and maybe I can even answer a few of your questions about this case. Add a comment by clicking Join the Conversation below, and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. For more unusual stories about money and business, subscribe here to receive Wells $treet right to your inbox for free.