Client says Simpson lawyer accepted fees for no work

A member of O.J. Simpson's Las Vegas "dream team" is accused of causing a nightmare for another client who is behind bars on murder charges.

Yale Galanter, who rose to fame in Nevada defending Simpson, is accused of accepting about $100,000 in legal fees from the client but not doing any work on his behalf.

The client, Thomas Randolph, filed a complaint with the State Bar of Nevada against Galanter in April. The bar confirmed it received the complaint.

Randolph, 54, is facing charges that he killed his wife and a handyman and staged it to look like a home invasion. He is facing the death penalty.

The Florida Bar also confirmed that it had received a complaint alleging Galanter didn't work for Randolph even though the client had paid him about $100,000, said Zannah Lyle, a Florida Bar spokeswoman.

She called the nature of the complaint a "very serious allegation" but wouldn't discuss it in detail.

Galanter is based in Florida but was allowed to practice law in Nevada.

The Nevada and Florida bars confirmed that they are looking into Randolph's allegations but haven't determined if his complaint has merit.

Galanter said Tuesday that the Nevada Bar had informed him of the complaint and he had filed a response. The Florida Bar, he said, didn't inform him of the complaint.

He declined to comment about the matter, saying he is prohibited from discussing it.

Galanter graduated from Nova Southeastern School of Law and formerly worked as a prosecutor for the Miami-Dade state attorney's office. Along with representing Simpson, he has appeared on television as a legal expert commenting on other cases.

Randolph's current attorney of record in Nevada is Gabriel Grasso, Galanter's co-counsel during Simpson's kidnapping and armed robbery trial in District Court.

Grasso couldn't be reached for comment.

But he told a district judge last week that Randolph didn't have any money to pay for private attorneys, according to court records.

Randolph has been behind bars since police arrested him in January. Authorities said he hired a hit man to kill his wife and then shot and killed the hit man after the job was done.

He killed his wife, Sharon Randolph, to collect more than $400,000 in insurance money, authorities said.

Sharon Randolph was his sixth wife. Four of his previous wives died. About two decades ago, he was tried and acquitted of killing wife Becky Randolph in Utah.

He is scheduled to go to trial in October in District Court.

Contact reporter David Kihara at dkihara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.