Lawyer Found Not Guilty of Contempt : Courts: The attorney still faces possible State Bar discipline for his hallway conversation with a juror in ‘the Alliance’ fraud trial.

A Century City lawyer has been found not guilty of criminal contempt for talking to a juror during “the Alliance” insurance fraud and legal corruption trial, a federal judge has ruled.

However, U.S. District Judge Clarence Newcomer said he will refer the case against attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. to the State Bar for possible disciplinary action. Newcomer made the ruling Wednesday, one day after a federal court jury in San Diego returned verdicts in the Alliance case.

Mesereau and a juror engaged in a hallway conversation on the morning of May 9, just before the start of that day’s proceedings. According to the juror, who immediately reported the conversation to the judge, Mesereau quizzed him extensively about his opinions of the case.

Mesereau was promptly hauled before Newcomer and protested his innocence, claiming the juror initiated the conversation and that he was unaware the man was a juror.

After hearing Mesereau’s and the juror’s version of events, Newcomer ordered a contempt hearing for Mesereau to be held after the Alliance trial. The trial ended Tuesday after more than two months.

Mesereau faced a penalty of up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine if found in contempt. But after a three-hour hearing Wednesday at which several witnesses testified, Newcomer acquitted Mesereau.

Mesereau could not be reached for comment, but his attorney, Richard Drooyan, said Mesereau “is pleased with the result.”

“I don’t believe that he was guilty of any criminal or ethical misconduct,” Drooyan said. “I would certainly hope” the State Bar agrees.

The contempt charge injected a note of intrigue in the Alliance case because of the ties between Mesereau and attorney Lynn B. Stites, the alleged mastermind and prime beneficiary of the Alliance scheme, who remains a fugitive.

Stites himself would have been on trial in San Diego, but he disappeared shortly before he was indicted in April, 1990. Before Stites’ disappearance, Mesereau had been representing him in civil litigation.

Mesereau was not involved in the Alliance trial and said he only went to San Diego on May 9 as a curious observer.

Jurors convicted four lawyers and acquitted four others in the Alliance case, which involved allegations that a ring of lawyers, led by Stites, had manipulated complex litigation to defraud insurance companies of at least $50 million in legal fees. Most of the dozen lawyers who pleaded guilty or were convicted in the case were from the San Fernando Valley.