A Brouhaha Over Spilled Beer at Staples Center

The O.J. exception . . . Whole Lotto love . . . Hello, Larry . . . Monster mash.

It had to happen sooner or later, given the ways of gravity, enthusiastic basketball fans and the well-stocked bars in Staples Center luxury suites. On Jan. 22, while the Lakers were losing to the Portland Trailblazers, a Corona bottle tumbled or was tossed from a luxury box, striking a couple seated below. Faster than you can say hoi polloi vs. fat cats, litigation ensued.

In their Superior Court lawsuit, Stacy and Anthony DiBernardo contend that the Lakers and the people who built and run Staples Center owed them a duty to “protect, prevent and warn of dangerous conditions such as glass bottles being thrown, hurled, knocked over or dropped from luxury boxes.”

The civil assault and battery suit, filed by attorney Robert J. Stoll, charges that Staples, the Lakers and the new arena’s investors and partners were negligent for allowing alcoholic beverages to be served in glass containers in the boxes.

There’s nothing to protect the fans down below, the suit says. And there’s no guarantee that luxury box patrons won’t become intoxicated and hurl or drop their beer bottles.

The suit states that like the ordinary people in the seats below, sky box fans should drink their beer out of less dangerous plastic or paper cups. The couple seeks unspecified damages and compensation to cover their medical bills and lost wages.

Spokesman Michael Roth said Staples Center is aware of the incident, but does not comment on pending litigation.

O.J. ADJACENT: Living next door to a celebrity murder defendant and having great unwashed hordes of reporters and looky-loos descend on the neighborhood doesn’t qualify as a tax deductible casualty loss, a U.S. Tax Court judge has ruled.

O.J. Simpson’s former Brentwood neighbors, Gerald and Kathleen Chamales, deducted $751,000--about a third of the value of their $2.8-million Bristol Avenue home--from their 1994 federal income taxes. They claimed that the notoriety of the Simpson case had unexpectedly tanked their property value.

According to court papers, the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman occurred 10 days after the Chamaleses’ house deal went into escrow. They had been charmed by the peaceful, park-like atmosphere of the neighborhood, which was disrupted during the years the Simpson criminal and civil cases wended their way through the courts. O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders in criminal court, but found legally liable for the deaths in civil court.

The Chamaleses had considered backing out of escrow, but decided against it because they would be vulnerable to a lawsuit. They embarked on a $2-million tear-down and rebuilding project, and moved into the house in December 1996.

The IRS challenged the deduction, saying that the drop in the house’s value was the result of market fluctuations. The loss was not caused by any direct damage to the property, and therefore did not qualify as a casualty loss, the IRS contended. The tax court agreed:

“Press and media attention extending for months bears little similarity to a fire, storm or shipwreck,” the court noted.

The news was not all bad for the homeowners. The court found they acted in good faith and therefore did not have to pay a $58,000 penalty in addition to the $292,000 owed to the IRS.

EASY COME, EASY GO: California Lottery winner Denise Rossi literally went for broke trying to keep her ex-husband’s hands off her $1.3-million jackpot. But once again, luck and the law were not on her side.

Rossi’s Chapter 13 petition was tossed out of court, and she has been banned from filing another bankruptcy claim for six months after U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Vincent Zurzolo found that her pleas of poverty were little more than a legal ruse to avoid paying the ex.

Rossi’s woes began in November, when Superior Court Judge Richard Denner found she had defrauded her former husband by failing to tell him about her windfall, which she won 11 days before filing for divorce.

Had she told Thomas Rossi, her husband of 25 years, about the winnings, he would have been entitled to half. Because she did not tell him, he gets it all, Denner ruled.

Not that Lady Luck is smiling on Thomas Rossi. When all is said and done, there might be a buck or two left for Mr. Rossi, who first must pay his own creditors under terms of his Chapter 7 bankruptcy case, filed in connection with the divorce.

HELLO, LARRY: Former TV anchorman Larry Carroll has sued his former business lawyers, charging that their bad advice about complex financial matters caused him to be arrested and tried for securities fraud.

Carroll was cleared in December by San Bernardino County Judge J. Michael Welsh, who threw out the criminal charges “in the interest of justice.”

Carroll charges in his Los Angeles Superior Court suit that lawyers with the Pittsburgh firm Wittlin, Goldston & Caputo never told him the deal was legally questionable. Yet, he alleges, when questioned by investigators, the lawyers lied and stated that they had warned him.

Carroll seeks unspecified damages for legal malpractice, breach of attorney-client privilege, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and fraud.

Carroll’s former attorneys could not be reached Friday.

FRANKENSUIT: The daughter of the late horror flick actor Boris Karloff is suing Universal Studios for more than $10 million, charging that the studio is pirating the actor’s image with knockoff monsters derived from his characters from “Frankenstein” and “The Mummy.”

Karloff, born William Henry Pratt, died in 1969 after appearing in 170 films over six decades. He is best known for his role as the original Frankenstein monster, and for playing Ardath Bey and Imhotep in “The Mummy.” His daughter, Sara Karloff of Riverside, charges that she holds the rights to Karloff’s creepy image and that Universal is poaching on her rights to royalties.

Times staff writer James Bates contributed to this column.