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McCourts' post-nuptial attorney tesitfies
The Boston attorney who prepped the McCourts’ post-nuptial agreement began his testimony yesterday in the couple’s L.A. divorce trial. He's the attorney who set off a legal battle when he tried to fix an apparent mistake.
Some copies of the McCourts’ post-nuptial agreement say Frank is the sole owner of the Dodgers. Others say the ballclub belongs to Frank and his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jamie.
Attorney Larry Silverstein prepared the papers; he said in court that he doesn’t recall doing it – but he must have flipped the word “inclusive” with “exclusive” on some copies. That put the team in Frank’s hands; his attorneys say that was the intent of the agreement.
If the Dodger deal went bad, the McCourts’ homes would be safe from creditors because they were in Jamie’s hands. But Jamie insists she wanted a stake in the ballclub.
Her attorney, David Boies, peppered Silverstein with questions about why he changed a signed and notarized document. His answer: it’s OK to fix errors “in certain circumstances.”
So why didn’t he tell Jamie McCourt he’d changed a key word? She didn’t know about it for almost six years. Silverstein conceded that “on reflection,” it would have been “better practice” to tell her back then that he’d flipped those words.