Monday, March 18, 2024

Judge orders Gelbman to pay Charlie Sheen’s legal fees

Earlier this month, a California judge ordered Flower Mound’s Itamar Gelbman to pay about $129,000 in legal fees in a long-running legal dispute between the famous actor Charlie Sheen and his former body guard.

Gelbman is the controversial former Flower Mound councilman who recently lost his bid for mayor of Flower Mound and is the admin of the large Facebook group Flower Mound Cares. He worked for a short time as Sheen’s security guard in 2014, and then sued Sheen for a breach of contract. But in April 2020, Hon. Robert S. Draper, judge of the Superior Court of California, ruled in Sheen’s favor, finding that Gelbman had taken advantage of Sheen’s then chronic inebriation. From the trial, the judge found “that the testimony of Gelbman on every important issue is neither credible nor true.”

A couple weeks after the trial, Gelbman dissolved 3 G.I., the company name he used for his security services and the name he filed the lawsuit under. Later that year, the judge granted Sheen’s motion for 3 G.I. to pay about $129,000 in legal fees, but Sheen’s lawyer then filed another motion to add Gelbman as an alter ego of 3 G.I. — which Gelbman conceded was a one-man corporation. Sheen’s lawyer argued that if Gelbman is not added as a judgment debtor, he would get out of the payment.

The judge granted the motion on June 9, holding Gelbman responsible for the $129,000 legal fees, according to court documents.

“Should the Court fail to acknowledge that 3 G.I. is/was an alter ego of Gelbman, Sheen would be prevented from collecting on his judgment from 3 G.I./Gelbman,” the judge wrote in his decision. “Such injustice is precisely the type that the alter ego doctrine is designed to prevent.”

Mark Smith
Mark Smith
Mark Smith is the Digital Editor of The Cross Timbers Gazette.

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