Marriage of Georgiou & Leslie

Attorney Georgiou (defendant), who earned 10-percent fees on cases he secured for his firm, signed the plaintiff in the Enron securities case in 2002 and filed for divorce from Leslie (plaintiff) in 2003; by their 2007 marital settlement agreement, Leslie knew of Georgiou's fee arrangement and that the firm had already collected over $7 billion from Enron, estimating the case's fee at $9-33 million and understanding Georgiou intended to argue for his full 10 percent — the agreement gave Leslie 10 percent of the eventual Enron fee. The court granted dissolution in December 2007 incorporating this agreement; in 2008, a court awarded Georgiou's firm $688 million in Enron fees, of which Georgiou personally received nine percent, and he paid Leslie $4 million per the settlement agreement that September. In December 2010, Leslie moved to set aside the dissolution judgment based on Georgiou's alleged failure to fully disclose his fee's value and breach of fiduciary duty in managing marital property; the trial court granted Georgiou's summary judgment motion based on the one-year statute of limitations for nondisclosure-based set-aside motions and the inapplicability of fiduciary-duty claims post-dissolution regarding an adjudicated asset. Leslie appealed.