Appeals Panel Reverses O.C. Marital Fraud Verdict

In a unique fraud case that jurists labeled “Sex, Lies and Trust Agreements,” an appeals court panel Thursday reversed a $242,000 damage award to an Anaheim banker who had persuaded a jury that his former wife duped him by concealing her lack of sexual passion for him.

“These are matters best left to advice columnists than to judges and juries,” concluded three justices of the 4th District Court of Appeal, who offered some advice of their own to civil court judges and juries: “Stay out of the bedroom.”

They added that “courts should not be in the business of probing a suitor’s state of mind.”

The panel’s 31-page ruling was prompted by the stormy divorce proceedings of Pacific Inland Bank President Ronald Askew, 50, and his former wife, Bonnette Askew, 46. Using the novel strategy that his ex-wife had committed fraud, Ronald Askew sued in civil court after Bonnette Askew admitted during marriage counseling that she had hidden her lack of sexual passion for him before and during their 11 years of marriage.

Last year, in a verdict that provoked worldwide publicity, an Orange County Superior Court jury sided with Ronald Askew, ordering Bonnette Askew to give up her share of four jointly owned parcels of property valued at about $242,000.

Bonnette Askew left the courtroom in shock April 7, but Thursday said she had always believed that the damage award would fail to stand up to scrutiny.

“The reason that this has gone on so long is that he flat out wanted to destroy me. And when a person becomes obsessed, they lose all concept of proportion,” said Bonnette Askew, who added that the legal battleground eventually became a high-stakes poker game.

Between the lawsuits in civil court and the legal skirmishes in family court, Bonnette Askew estimated that the couple’s legal costs now approach $500,000. She added that this is probably not the end of the legal war of the Askews.

“He’s going to retaliate some way,” she said. “He’s already threatened me with two or three lawsuits.”

Ronald Askew was not available for comment Thursday. His attorney, Albert M. Graham Jr., said he was disappointed with the appellate court ruling but needed more time to study the opinion before deciding on a next step.

Graham said Ronald Askew could appeal the decision, seek a rehearing of the issue before the same panel of appeals justices or return to family court to settle the issue of community property.

Legal experts had predicted that the verdict--if upheld--could have spawned copycat lawsuits, reshaping the California law that property must be split evenly upon divorce. The case sparked debate about how far the the legal system should go in regulating romance.

The appeals court Thursday also raised concerns that such lawsuits could have played havoc with California’s no-fault divorce system and its “anti-heartbalm” statutes. The laws, which date back to the 1930s, were passed to prevent jilted lovers from using the civil courts to seek damages as a “heartbalm” for the pain of a broken engagement or breached promises.

“Words of love, passion and sexual desire are simply unsuited to the cumbersome stricture of common law fraud and deceit,” wrote Justice David Sills in a section of the opinion entitled “Sex, Lies and Trust Agreements.”

“The idea that a judge, or jury of 12 solid citizens, can arbitrate whether an individual’s romantic declarations are true or false, or made with intent to deceive, seems almost ridiculously wooden,” Sills wrote.

The Askews, who have two children ages 14 and 11, were granted a divorce in 1992. But in a separate civil trial, Ronald Askew claimed that four pieces of property the couple owned should not be included as community property in their divorce settlement.

Before the marriage, Ronald Askew said he pleaded for honesty, asking his bride-to-be if there was anything he should know about their relationship or future marriage. According to him, she said there was “nothing” he needed to know. In court, he testified that discussions followed about “passion, desire or physical attraction.”

As the relationship started unraveling in 1991, the couple sought marriage counseling. Relations were so tense, Bonnette Askew remembered, that even as they were living together she said she would receive telephone calls from her husband’s lawyer, notifying her to provide more toilet paper to her husband.

“I had him on a pedestal,” she said. “I catered to his every whim. When I started to branch out and do things on my own, I started becoming more of a person again. He couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t deal with the fact that I wasn’t his little woman anymore.’

During a 1991 counseling session, Ronald Askew said, his wife revealed her lack of physical attraction for him. It was this admission that Ronald Askew used as the basis of his fraud claim, arguing that if he had known about her apathy he would not have married her or placed the properties in both their names.

In their opinion, the justices noted that Ronald Askew tried to downplay the sexual nature of his fraud complaint in the appeals process. Instead, they said, he stressed that Bonnette Askew had also made oral promises to hold some of the properties in trust for him and his children from a previous marriage--but that the parcels would revert to his ownership on request.

The justices scoffed at that “post hoc recasting” of the case, saying that the essence of the lawsuit still boiled down to accusations about love and sexual attraction.

“This case may be gussied up as a fraud action, but it is still essentially a breach-of-promise suit,” wrote Sills, who also noted that the state long ago established public policy barring litigation of affairs of the heart.

And if that was so, the trial judge should have dismissed the lawsuit and steered the dispute about community property back into a family law court, according to the panel.

Grace Blumberg, a UCLA law professor, praised Thursday’s appeals court decision. Months ago, she had publicly predicted that the damage award would be struck down.

“They are absolutely right and the trial court was totally wrong,” she said. “I felt that the jury had made the decision on the basis of feeling aggrieved for the husband and so they were going to punish her. This should have been handled in family court.”