O.C. Palimony Trial Catches Nation’s Eye

The trial is a classic case of “he says, she says,” but legal experts say it could lead to the biggest palimony settlement ever in a case that is dripping with enough romantic intrigue, high finance and secrecy to hold an audience of courtroom TV watchers captive.

Opening statements began Thursday in the palimony trial of Anthony Maglica, the founder of a $300-million flashlight empire, and Claire Maglica, the vice president of his company who took Maglica’s name and lived with him for more than 22 years. They made headlines last year when they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a blinded boy they rescued from Bosnia. The Maglicas told people they were married, but never were.

On Thursday, just one week after moving from the couple’s Anaheim Hills estate, Claire Maglica took the multimillionaire to trial, saying she deserves half of the empire they built together as they transformed a humble machine shop into what attorneys described as a world premier flashlight company.

Claire Maglica, 60, alleges that Anthony broke an oral agreement they made when they met in 1971 to always share everything and “live out of one pocket.”

“This is a case about trust, and it is a case about greed,” Claire Maglica’s attorney, John W. Keker, told an Orange County Superior Court jury as the trial got underway live on Courtroom Television Network.

“It’s a case about love, and someone who didn’t remember the promises he made once he stopped loving.”

But attorneys for Anthony Maglica, 64, say he was burned by a divorce once and vowed from the beginning of the relationship never to marry again in order to protect his property. He contends that he only let Claire Maglica use his name and publicly introduce herself as his wife “to avoid embarrassment to her.”

Anthony Maglica says the couple signed an agreement in 1977 vowing to keep their property separate--an agreement she says she misunderstood.

“You’ll find that this is a story that is truly rags to riches,” Anthony Maglica’s attorney, Dennis M. Wasser, told jurors.

Those riches, he argued, belong to Anthony Maglica, not Claire.

On Thursday, jurors glimpsed snapshots of the couple’s life together: There were photos of them standing with former President Bush when he visited their Ontario-based Mag Industries Inc. Other pictures showed the couple in matching fur coats, the company Rolls-Royce that Claire drove and their executive office at Mag with desks side by side.

It was a long way from their first meeting in 1971: Anthony Maglica was a Croatian immigrant who eked out a living in a Southern California machine shop so sparsely furnished that he hung his clothes on a pair of skis in the corner, showered in a washbasin and walked across the railroad tracks to a nearby Wienerschnitzel for meals.

Claire had come from an impoverished past in New York, where she spent her teen years in an orphanage. Both were at the tail end of failing marriages when they met.

She was working as an interior designer when he called her to his machine shop to help redecorate. Within a month, they were spending the weekend at a Palm Springs motel, vowing to commit to one another, she said.

“He talked about whatever we built together from the business, which was in the dregs then, we would own together,” said Claire Maglica, a pale, willowy woman with an immaculate gray bob and a heavy New York accent that hints at her past.

“Tony told me we were one pocket,” she told the jury. “We’d make it. We’d eat beans together if we had to, but we’d do it together.”

She glared at Anthony Maglica as she took the witness stand. Anthony, a balding, gray-haired man with bushy sideburns, sat slightly hunched as she spoke. Earlier he shook his head repeatedly as her lawyer outlined Claire’s side for the jury.

Mag Industries Inc. now employs more than 600 people and occupies 11 buildings in Ontario. In the late 1970s, the company developed its first flashlight, the Mag-Lite, which quickly came into widespread use by street cops and homeowners preparing earthquake kits.

Their relationship began to sour in 1992, Claire says, when Anthony told her she was neither his wife nor his business partner and never had been.

Since then, his assets have become somewhat of a mystery. According to Claire Maglica, Anthony has funneled millions of dollars out of the company since she filed her lawsuit in July.

Anthony Maglica has filed a cross-complaint accusing Claire of violating their written agreement by secretly setting up a joint account and embezzling more than $360,000 from him since 1989, spending the money for clothing, jewelry and gifts for her children from marriage and for her grandchildren.

“There was one pocket and it was picked,” Wasser told jurors.

So sensitive are Anthony Maglica’s business holdings that Superior Court Judge Robert J. Polis agreed to seal the case file to keep financial information from the prying eyes of business competitors.

After Claire sued, she remained in the couple’s home until last week to help care for the Bosnian boy they had rescued last year, her attorney said. Last month, Anthony Maglica took young Sead Bekric with him to Lillehammer, Norway, for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Forty thousand flashlights donated by Maglica illuminated the sky.

Anthony Maglica’s attorney, however, said Claire’s reasons for staying so long in the couple’s home were less noble: She enjoyed the luxuries of the estate and what Wasser described as a generous allowance that helped her amass an awesome collection of jewels, clothes and shoes.

“The only one who rivals her in the number of shoes is possibly Imelda Marcos,” Wasser told the jury.

“You’re going to hear that Claire Maglica lived like a queen,” he said. “Mrs. Maglica drove the Rolls-Royce. She stays in the best hotels and always has. She’s met presidents and vice presidents, and she works her own hours.”

The money she received came to about $1.7 million over the years, Wasser said.

Keker countered that the money his client received was well earned. As vice president and secretary of Mag Instruments Inc., Claire handled all the marketing and personnel decisions, and read Anthony his mail because he does not read English well, Keker said.

When the company incorporated in 1974, Anthony Maglica became the sole shareholder.

He also insisted that all the property they bought be placed in his name, a fact that Claire’s attorney said verged on paranoia. His attorney said it merely points out how Anthony felt from the beginning about keeping control of his assets.

Claire agreed to accept a salary that was lower than some of the men reporting to her only because she was sure all their earnings from Mag were pooled, Keker said.

It was her idea to make the mini-mag flashlight--a smaller version of the Mag-Lite--in different colors as a woman’s touch, she testified. And in the 1980s, she said, it was her idea to create a AAA-battery travel version of the small flashlight for women.

Claire Maglica also said she laid out Anthony’s clothes every day, taught him how to improve his English and went to 15 to 20 trade shows a year in the early years of the business.

Court-watchers say Claire Maglica’s stature in the company sets this case apart from other palimony suits. That’s part of what prompted the Courtroom Television Network to cover the case live.

“Her testimony is that she’s been sitting across from him in the office for years, actually working,” said Clara Tuma, the network’s reporter on the case.

The first case that coined the term “palimony” caught the public’s attention in the 1970s, when Michelle Triola sued actor Lee Marvin after they separated.

After learning about the Marvin case, Anthony Maglica contends, he and Claire drafted the 1977 agreement to keep their property separate.

But Claire says Anthony stuck a document in front her face and told her to sign it one night after they celebrated the sixth anniversary of their first romantic night together in Palm Springs.

Her attorney said she believed the document said they would marry one day. Attorneys said the case will boil down to whether jurors believe Claire’s version about an oral agreement or Anthony’s version of events about the written agreement.

Said Wasser: “What you’re asked to decide is, ‘What was the deal between these two people?’ Take a look at the written agreement. That was the deal,” Wasser told the jury.

Said Keker: “We’ll ask you whether or not that contract they made . . . should be honored, or whether Tony is right. He gets everything and she doesn’t get a knife, spoon or a tea cup.”