Palimony Trial Is a Daytime Hit : Courts: Broadcast of split of Claire and Tony Maglica, a high society Orange County couple, draws viewers nationwide. Loyalties are about evenly divided.

Move over, Luke and Laura. These days, daytime television watchers are glued to the real-life drama of Claire and Tony, the high society Orange County couple whose bitter palimony battle is being broadcast live from Santa Ana on Court TV.

That’s the cable network that broadcasts trials from all over the country, and this week network officials say they have been swamped with hundreds of calls from viewers hooked on Maglica vs. Maglica: women who are rooting for Claire to triumph over her lover, whom they have decided is greedy; men who grouse that the network’s female commentators are unfairly biased in favor of Claire and insist that she is the greedy one.

For those just tuning in, Claire Maglica is suing Anthony Maglica for half of Mag Instrument Inc., a flashlight empire she estimates is worth $400 million. He is the company’s president. She is the executive vice president.

The calls and letters to Court TV have not been overwhelmingly in favor of either Claire or Anthony Maglica and are not necessarily split along gender lines, said Debby Fry Wilson, vice president of public and governmental affairs at the network.

But emotions are running high. Just listen.

“In the Maglica case, I resent the fact that your analysts all favor the plaintiff. In this case, it is very clear that Claire is an embezzling liar and Mr. Maglica is an honorable man,” said one middle-aged man from the southeastern United States who called the network last week.

Sound harsh? Consider this counterpunch:

“Tony Maglica is making a career out of being a poor, old, misunderstood, befoggled, poor-English-speaking, heart-of-gold foreigner struggling to make good in America,” one man said April 18. “Everyone is dancing to his tune, and he should get an Academy Award.”

The Anaheim Hills couple have rubbed shoulders with U.S. presidents, sent generous contributions to the Republican Party and made headlines last year when they airlifted a blinded Bosnian boy to California for treatment.

Although the Maglicas lived together for more than 22 years and were known to many as husband and wife, they never married.

An Orange County Superior Court jury began deliberating Wednesday in their palimony trial, which has been broadcast live for the past six weeks on Court TV, the three-year-old, New York-based cable network which is available to more than 14 million households nationwide. It is carried by some Los Angeles County cable companies, but is not available in Orange County unless you have a satellite dish.

If Claire Maglica prevails, legal experts say, the case could lead to the biggest palimony settlement ever.

Claire Maglica, 60, and Anthony, a 64-year-old Croatian immigrant, worked side by side for more than two decades, turning a small machine shop into the Ontario-based Mag Instrument Inc., maker of the popular Mag-Lite flashlight.

She says Anthony vowed to her repeatedly that they would always share everything. He says he made it perfectly clear the houses and business belonged only to him.

So who do viewers believe?

“Bless her if Claire can get even $5 from this fellow who she lived with for 20 years,” said one woman over 55 years old who declined to say where she was calling from. One young woman called in asking for Claire Maglica’s address “so I can write her words of support.”

But some sneered, complaining about gender bias.

“The guest commentators in the Maglica case are women and are favoring Claire Maglica. This is one-sided,” one young man from the Northwest said. “The women need to be more fair.”

Fry Wilson said that Court TV, also known as the Courtroom Television Network, keeps track of its daily calls from viewers. transcribing the comments and recording each caller’s age range and where they are calling from. Calls peaked at about 1,000 a week during the murder trial of Lyle and Eric Menendez.

She said that all of the network’s commentators are attorneys, and that if they issue opinions, they do so based on their professional expertise, not their emotions.

In the Maglica case, the issues “really hit home,” Fry Wilson said. “It’s a trial that anyone can identify with, being that it’s a domestic dispute, and unfortunately half our population will go through these kinds of issues--splitting the family assets, or separating business assets.”