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Oksana Grigorieva Denied Appeal by California Court

By Tanya Roth, Esq. on June 30, 2011 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Here's some Mel Gibson drama in the California Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals in the Second Judicial District of California (i.e., Los Angeles) has rejected a bid by Oksana Grigorieva to remove Mel Gibson's attorneys from a child custody case on the grounds of conflict of interest, reports the Associated Press.

Grigorieva was Mel Gibson's girlfriend, once upon a time. Now, she's in a bitter child custody case with her former beau, over the couple's 20-month old daughter. The Russian singer claims that she met with a partner at the firm representing Mel Gibson.

Ronald Anteau, a partner at Kolodny and Anteau in Los Angeles, met with Oksana Grigorieva in 2008 at Gibson’s suggestion when Grigorieva was dealing with custody issues against Timothy Dalton, the father of Grigorieva’s son Alexander.

She is now raising that meeting as reason to remove Mel Gibson’s attorneys from the case she has pending with him.

According to her filing, she wrote that, “The matters discussed with Mr. Anteau concerned the same subject matter that has been inquired into in the present case by Stephen Kolodny [Mel’s lawyer] both in open court and at deposition.”

Her appeal stated that Gibson’s attorneys were looking to discover records of her dispute with Timothy Dalton, including emails, text messages and other correspondence, writes the AP.

Grigorieva brought the conflict of interest argument up in Los Angeles Superior Court before Judge Scott Gordon. Judge Gordon ruled that the complaint ran beyond the statute of limitations and that she had waited too long to raise the issue.

Gibson plead guilty last year to allegations of battery against Grigorieva. Grigorieva was reported to have dropped the charges in May.

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