Supreme Court Revives Gionis’ Conviction on Attack on Pair : Ruling: State panel says doctor’s remark to lawyer about Aissa Wayne was not confidential. Case awaits appellate decisions.

The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that there was no basis for a lower court’s reversal of the conviction of a Norwalk surgeon found guilty of hiring thugs to attack his former wife, a daughter of the late actor John Wayne.

The high court’s ruling, in effect reinstating the 1992 conviction of Thomas Gionis, clarifies the rules that govern when conversations between a lawyer and a defendant are not confidential. In its 6-1 ruling the court held that clients speak at their peril to a lawyer who has already refused to represent them.

Gionis had been sentenced to five years in prison for arranging an assault on Aissa Marie Wayne and her friend Roger Luby at Luby’s Newport Beach estate. The case now returns to the state Court of Appeal in Santa Ana where remaining issues in Gionis’ appeal must be decided.

Gionis declined to comment Thursday when reached at Coast Plaza Doctors Hospital in Norwalk, where he now works.

But Luby was ecstatic at the news.

“I love it! Justice is slow, but we finally got our day. Finally the victims can rest,” said Luby, a Newport Beach mortgage banker. “I’m smoking a nice cigar, and I’m going to have a nice, big Scotch.”

Wayne, who graduated from law school last year and now volunteers at the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said she was pleased by the court’s decision.

“I’m happy,” she said. “I was assaulted 6 1/2 years ago, and I’ve been through numerous trials. I’m glad finally there’s a resolution. The only problem I have is that it took so long.”

Prosecutors praised the ruling and said Gionis would remain free until the 4th District Court of Appeal has a chance to resolve several “relatively minor issues.”

“I’m very pleased that the Supreme Court saw the facts of the case the way we saw it,” said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans.

Gionis, a wealthy surgeon, had been embroiled in a custody dispute with Wayne over their daughter. He was tried twice for the assault, hiring F. Lee Bailey to represent him in a preliminary hearing before the first trial and prominent New York lawyer Bruce Cutler in the second.

The first jury deadlocked and the second voted for conviction after a family law lawyer testified about incriminating statements Gionis had made to him about 15 months before the attack.

It was the use of those statements that partly led to the conviction’s reversal and the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday. The court majority held that clients should not assume that their remarks to a lawyer will be confidential if the lawyer has already declined to take their case.

The dispute over attorney-client privilege arose when Pomona attorney John Lueck was permitted to testify against Gionis in the second trial.

Lueck knew Gionis and Wayne socially and referred clients to Gionis for medical evaluations. After Gionis received divorce papers from Wayne in 1987, he called Lueck and asked him to come to his home. Lueck agreed after telling Gionis he would not represent him in the divorce case.

Lueck testified that the surgeon had remarked that his estranged wife “had no idea how easy it would be for him to pay somebody to really take care of her.”

Lueck only represented Gionis in the divorce case at one court appearance when Gionis said he could not locate his regular lawyer.

The court majority ruled that Gionis spoke to Lueck as a friend and not as a legal client, thus no attorney-client privilege protected the conversation.

“Lueck’s unequivocal refusal to represent defendant, made before any incriminating disclosures were made, detracts significantly from defendant’s claim of privilege,” Justice Marvin R. Baxter wrote for the majority.

In a dissent, Justice Stanley Mosk contended that Gionis’ remarks to Lueck were privileged because they were made during what was “primarily a legal consultation.”

“This was a close case, as illustrated by the fact that the first jury--which did not have the benefit of Lueck’s testimony--deadlocked,” Mosk wrote.

Gionis was linked to the 1988 attack by telephone calls he made to a private investigator who associated with the two assailants. One of them handcuffed Luby’s ankles and hands, smashed his face into the concrete floor of his garage and severed his right Achilles’ tendon with a knife. The other forced Wayne to the ground with a knife and twice smashed her face into the concrete.

The investigator and the two assailants were sentenced to prison for the assault. Wayne required more than two dozen stitches for a wound to her head, and Luby had to wear a hip-to-ankle cast for three weeks.

Deputy state Atty. Gen. Rhonda Cartwright-Ladendorf said no decision has yet been made as to whether to try to rearrest Gionis, who remains free on a $2-million bail bond.

William J. Kopeny, the defense attorney for Gionis, could not be reached for comment.