A lawyer for Shelly Sterling wants a temporary restraining order directing her husband to stop his alleged threats against him and the two doctors who maintain the Clippers co-owner is mentally incapacitated, but an attorney for the Clippers owner downplayed the situation and said his client simply has a “short fuse.”
Lawyers on both sides mingled in a second floor hallway of the downtown County Courthouse to await word on whether a Los Angeles Superior Court probate judge will act today on the restraining order motion or consider it another day.
According to Shelly Sterling’s attorney, Pierce O’Donnell, Donald Sterling called him June 9 and said, “I am going to take you out, O’Donnell.”’
“This is not the way you conduct civil litigation in America,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell said the doctors received letters and voice mails from Sterling last week warning that he would take action to have their medical licenses revoked if they testified against him in a hearing scheduled July 7 to determine if Shelly Sterling has authority to sell the team.
But Sterling attorney Maxwell Blecher said his client has a “short fuse” and that the incident was merely a “blip on a much larger screen.”
Another Sterling attorney, Bobby Samini, said the conversation between Sterling and O’Donnell was “not confrontational, but quite entertaining.” He said court papers were filed on Sterling’s behalf opposing the restraining order motion.
Samini said the letters O’Donnell referred to were sent to the doctors to advise them not to distribute Sterling’s medical records to third parties with no involvement in the litigation.
