Wife of Ex-O.C. Senator Agrees to Settle Lawsuit : Accord: Margene Campbell, who is accused of skimming money, will help pay $30,000.

The wife of former Orange County state Sen. William Campbell has agreed to help pay $30,000 to settle a state lawsuit accusing her of skimming money from women’s conferences that Campbell sponsored, authorities announced Friday.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren filed the unusual civil suit in mid-April. It accuses Margene Campbell and a former business partner, Karen Smith, of using their influence “to unjustly enrich” themselves from the Conference on Women in 1987 and 1988, while Sen. Campbell was in office.

As partners in West Coast Seminars of Laguna Niguel, the pair collected $427,000 to help organize the conferences, at which speakers gave seminars about personal and career enrichment.

Lungren’s suit said the amount was “a sum far in excess of the fair market value” of their work. It asked for at least $20,000 in damages from the women and John J. Costello, the conference’s former president. The suit says Costello signed the inflated consultant contract “out of loyalty” to Margene Campbell.

The settlement, signed earlier this week and announced Friday, says Margene Campbell and Costello have agreed to pay $10,000. They will pay the remaining $20,000--with interest--over the next two years.

“This agreement is entered into solely for the purpose of avoiding the expense and inconvenience of litigation and is not to be construed as an admission of fault or liability by any party hereto,” the settlement says.

The money is to be put into a Pepperdine University trust to provide “educational and business seminars for women.” In return, Lungren agreed to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled.

Although Smith was named as a defendant in the suit, she is not a part of the settlement and does not have to repay any money. She also faces no penalty because the attorney general’s office was unable to serve legal papers on her before the case was dismissed, Lungren spokesman Dave Puglia said.

The agreement ends an attorney general’s case that was opened in May, 1988, after press accounts revealed that Campbell’s wife and staff were making money from conferences arranged on state time. Under state community property law, half of the amount collected by Campbell’s wife would be his.

Puglia said he did not know why the case, opened under the administration of former Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, took so long. “We thought we received a fair settlement,” Puglia said.

The annual meetings, which began in 1984 and were attended by as many as 14,000 people at a time, featured speakers such as talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and Jihan Sadat, the former first lady of Egypt.

State records have shown that Smith, who was coordinator of the then-senator’s Orange County district office, earned $61,500 for individual work on conferences between 1984 and 1986.

Smith and Margene Campbell then formed a company and worked on the 1987 and 1988 conferences. They received between 30% and 40% of the conference expenses to schedule speakers and seminars, records show.

Campbell, a Republican from Hacienda Heights, resigned his Senate seat in 1989 to take the job as president of the powerful California Manufacturers Assn., a Sacramento lobbying group representing business.

He was unavailable for comment Friday, as was the attorney for his wife. Costello and Smith could not be reached for comment.