Actress, Family of Therapist End Suit Over Loans : Courts: Soap opera star Deidre Hall had sought to recoup $800,000. Settlement is secret.

Big-money loans. Accusations of fraud and forged signatures. The breakdown of a long friendship between a soap opera star and a Newport Beach socialite whose late husband treated the rich and famous with his own style of psychoanalysis.

The story may sound like a plot from “Days of Our Lives.” But the real-life drama came to a surprise end in Superior Court on Thursday between that show’s star, Deidre Hall, and the family and associates of her late therapist.

As jurors waited to hear closing arguments in the case, brought by Hall in an attempt to recoup $800,000 she loaned George Barkouras before he died, the two sides reached a confidential settlement.

“I’m pleased in every area,” said Hall, who plays the troubled and lately demonically possessed psychiatrist Dr. Marlena Evans on the NBC daytime drama. “I feel completely vindicated.”

Attorneys on both sides described the settlement as a compromise, with no admissions of liability to the allegations of fraud.

“All the parties are satisfied,” said attorney Murray Abowitz, who represented Barkouras’ widow, Mary Dell, and his two sons.

The conflict dates back to the early 1990s, when Hall sued family and associates of George Barkouras over three unpaid promissory notes she gave him in 1990 and 1991, totaling $800,000. The 47-year-old actress, who reached into her pension plan to come up with $150,000 of the loan, testified that the money amounted to her life’s savings.

Hall alleged in her suit that 15 days before her therapist died of cancer in 1992, three properties were fraudulently transferred to Mary Dell Barkouras, which left his estate penniless.

But Mary Dell Barkouras, a Newport Beach charity activist who once worked as Hall’s wardrobe consultant, and other defendants denied doing anything fraudulent to avoid paying the debt and said the transfers were entirely legal.

Barkouras said she had been making $8,000 monthly payments on the loan when Hall filed the lawsuit, according to court records.

She also argued in court documents that the property transfers, including title to her Dover Shores home, came as part of a written agreement she made with her husband in 1987 after he underwent cancer surgery. The agreement, in which she promised to give up her work to provide constant care for her husband, nullified a prenuptial agreement between the couple before their marriage earlier that year, according to court records.

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During the trial, both sides called handwriting experts who offered conflicting testimony about the authenticity of the 54-year-old therapist’s signatures on the three disputed deed transfers.

Attorney James T. Shaw, who represented Hall, said he believed the signatures were forged, although he did not have any proof as to who may have done it.

The legal battle came after years of friendship between the Barkourases and Hall, who described the trial as “excruciating.”

As Hall’s wardrobe consultant, Mary Dell Barkouras and Hall used to shop in some of Orange County’s most exclusive boutiques. George Barkouras was her therapist for eight years.

The charismatic Greek-born therapist, whose ambitions to transform psychoanalytic theory drew mixed response, was no stranger to controversy.

In 1981, Time Magazine chronicled a storm surrounding his practice in Oklahoma City that included members of the city’s most powerful and socially elite families. Barkouras arrived in the city in 1971 with $1,000 and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Kiel in West Germany. When mainstream psychologists in the city complained that he was practicing psychology without a license, Barkouras successfully defended himself as a lay analyst who needed no license.

The state legislature eventually barred all lay analysts like Barkouras from practicing in Oklahoma.

After moving to Orange County, he founded and served as chief executive of the Phoenix Press in Irvine, one of Southern California’s larger printers. An Irvine company bought the press, which specializes in computer and software manuals, for $3.5 million after his death on Jan. 4, 1992.

Hall said she never dreamed her loans to Barkouras, whom she was trying to help through his cancer, would lead to court action.

“I thought the whole thing was an exquisite betrayal,” Hall said.

After the settlement was announced, she gathered with jurors, who never got to vote on the case, to autograph pictures of herself and talk about her new baby boy. The actress, who is contending for a best actress award at tonight’s 11th Annual Soap Opera Awards, also posed for pictures, even with Superior Court Judge C. Robert Jameson.

“I’m just glad the whole thing is behind us,” she added.