Judge Rules That Piano Is Simpson’s Mother’s

O.J. Simpson’s 75-year-old mother convinced a judge Tuesday that a $20,000 grand piano housed for years at her son’s Rockingham estate was really hers, and therefore should not be seized by the family of murder victim Ronald Goldman.

“I’m so happy--thank you, thank you, thank you,” Eunice Simpson, who uses a wheelchair, said after the decision by Santa Monica Superior Court Judge David Perez. “I’m going to play it, play it, play it until I can’t play no more.”

A lawyer for Fred Goldman had argued that the elder Simpson merely enjoyed use of the instrument the Simpson family referred to as “Grandma’s piano,” and that by law, control and ownership belonged to O.J. Simpson.

“This was a piano in his home that he enjoyed for 14 years, and presumably will continue to enjoy,” said Goldman attorney Gary Caris. “It was a fine piece of furniture in a $4-million mansion that fit very nicely in Mr. Simpson’s lifestyle.”

The attempt to seize the piano was Goldman’s latest unsuccessful bid to force Simpson to begin paying the $19-million wrongful-death judgment awarded by a civil court jury.

By the end of the summer, Goldman attorneys were forced to abandon efforts to seize Simpson’s $40,000 Ford Expedition, which is leased, and the $16,000 after taxes he receives monthly from a pension fund, which is protected by law.

Their only hope of recovering any of the judgment now, lawyers acknowledge, would be from the sale of belongings taken last spring from Simpson’s home.

But ownership of those items is claimed by a handful of people--including Simpson’s children. What’s more, any sale is on hold until a court determines whether any other items are protected from seizure and how the proceeds might be divided between the Goldmans and the estate of Simpson’s former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.

A civil trial jury found Simpson liable for the June 12, 1994, deaths of Goldman and Nicole Simpson and awarded the victims’ families $33.5 million in damages. A criminal court jury earlier had acquitted Simpson of charges that he murdered the pair.

In the dispute over the black-lacquered, Yamaha baby grand piano, Simpson attorney Ronald P. Slates put three witnesses on the stand to testify that the piano was always understood to have been owned by Eunice Simpson. O.J. Simpson was not present Tuesday.

Testifying from her wheelchair, Eunice Simpson recalled the day in January 1984 when her son and his then-wife, Nicole, presented her with the piano, topped by a big, red bow, as a combination birthday-retirement gift.

“I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ and O.J. said, ‘Thank me also, because I’m the one who paid for it,’ ” Eunice Simpson testified. “We had a regular little concert on what I called my piano and I played ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’ ”

Slates said the piano could be delivered from Sheriff’s Department custody to O.J. Simpson’s newly leased Pacific Palisades home as early as next week.