Rudy Giuliani is on the hook for nearly $150 million in damages owed to two Georgia election workers.It’s likely an uncollectible amount given Giuliani’s financial troubles, legal experts said.Even declaring bankruptcy won’t help Giuliani shirk what he owes.
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Rudy Giuliani was dealt a devastating financial blow amid his already-mounting money troubles after a federal jury on Friday ordered him to pay two Georgia election workers a whopping $148 million in damages stemming from his 2020 election conspiracies.
The jury awarded election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss millions of dollars each following their testimony about the racism and threats they endured in 2020 after Giuliani, then working as a personal attorney for former President Donald Trump, repeatedly and falsely claimed the women had produced suitcases of fake ballots and tallied them as part of the vote count.
Freeman and Moss were both awarded more than $16 million each in compensatory damages, as well as $20 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and $75 million in total punitive damages — leaving Giuliani with a near $150 million bill to pay.
But several legal experts told Business Insider that the hefty verdict is likely an uncollectible amount, given Giuliani’s well-documented fiscal issues.
“He can’t pay this,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers. “And it won’t go away.”
The former New York City mayor has racked up a litany of financial and legal troubles since dedicating himself fully to Trump’s ill-fated effort to maintain the presidency following President Joe Biden’s win in November 2020.
Giuliani — who was once considered one of the top prosecutors in the country — could be on the hook for still millions more as he faces two suits brought by voting machine companies, as well as a sexual harassment suit for $10 million and a $1.4 million suit from his former lawyers.
And Giuliani’s Georgia-centric legal woes aren’t over yet. Both he and Trump, along with 17 other defendants, were indicted by the Fulton County district attorney’s office earlier this year for their role in efforts to overturn the state’s election results.
Freeman and Moss, meanwhile, likely face an “uphill battle” in trying to collect the millions they’re owed by Giuliani, Sarah Krissoff, a white collar defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, told Business Insider.
Legal experts said plaintiffs, who are responsible for enforcing their judgments, typically have three routes for trying to collect damages they’re owed.
They can pursue wage garnishment, in which a court withholds a defendant’s earnings to redirect to their debt.
Plaintiffs can also go after a defendant’s property, trying to get the court to attach a lien on someone’s house or larger assets.
Or they can levy a defendant’s bank account and take what they’re owed directly from the financial institution.
But even if Giuliani is lacking the funds or assets to fulfill his full payment, the judgment will follow him indefinitely, legal experts said.
“If at some point he has a windfall, they may be able to recover against that,” Krissoff said, suggesting earnings from a future Giuliani book deal, for example, could go to Freeman and Moss.
Bankruptcy isn’t an option
Even if Giuliani was looking for a quick way to make his $148 million judgment disappear, filing bankruptcy won’t help, bankruptcy lawyers told Business Insider.
Much like the case with Infowars host Alex Jones, who was ordered to pay more than $1 billion to the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims last year, Giuliani won’t be able to use legal maneuvers under bankruptcy law to discharge his debt, because the law does not apply to “willful and malicious injury caused to another entity or person,” Peter Davidson, a bankruptcy lawyer of 43 years, told Business Insider.
A Texas judge in a bankruptcy court ruled in October that Jones cannot use bankruptcy protections because they do not apply to “willful and malicious” conduct.
“Anybody can declare bankruptcy,” Davidson said. “The issue is whether he can discharge the debt.”
There also could be a hypothetical path for Giuliani to control the debt payment process in which he could force Freeman and Moss into a payment plan and hold off collection efforts, Sharon Weiss, a bankruptcy lawyer and partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, said.
“He would have to be a good debtor. He would have to follow all the rules of a bankruptcy case,” Weiss said, adding that she’s not “entirely convinced it would work for him.”
Marvin Sicherman, a bankruptcy lawyer and adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University, provided the counterpoint that, depending on the exact jury findings, attorneys may still have to prove in bankruptcy court that there was malicious intent to harm the election workers which could be a challenge in itself because Giuliani is a public figure.
Sicherman added that the plaintiffs are going to have a difficult time collecting even a portion of the settlement given Giuliani’s ongoing financial troubles.
“You got a whopping judgment. Now you gotta collect. Where are you gonna collect it from?” he said.
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