Teresa Giudice sues bankruptcy lawyer for $5 million in malpractice suit
The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice is backing up her previous claims that she was clueless about the fraudulent withholding of assets in her bankruptcy case that eventually landed her a 15-month prison sentence by filing a $5 million malpractice suit against her bankruptcy lawyer!
In the court documents, obtained by TMZ, Teresa claims her attorney, James Kridel, never met with her prior to the bankruptcy filing and that it was he who neglected to include valuable assets such as cars, rental property income and various bank accounts.
It should be pointed out that Teresa did sign off on the paperwork, but if you recall from her post-sentencing Watch What Happens: Live interview with Andy Cohen, Teresa was quite candid about her ignorance. “I do need to read things before I sign them. I do need to understand things before I sign them,” Teresa said. “I’m a trustworthy person and sometimes I take what other people say and I just believe them, I trust them and I can’t do that anymore. I gotta make sure I fully understand something or fully read it or find a contract lawyer that could help me. Because I don’t read contracts every day. I want to get better at it.”
My knee-jerk reaction to this news was the expected shaking of my damn head, but once I thought about it, I realized that it seems very unlikely that Teresa’s attorney was completely unaware of her unreported assets. I don’t know if this puts him on the hook for malpractice (I wonder if he received instructions from Joe?), but it does seem to put him in the legal ethics hot seat.
So far there has been no official statement from Teresa’s former attorney. We will keep you updated.