Opri Can't Cash In on Hoff

Thu., Aug. 23, 2007 6:16 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

The Hoff is off the hook when it comes to paying his wife's legal bills.

A Los Angeles judge has denied a petition filed by high-profile, high-priced lawyer Debra Opri seeking a court order forcing David Hasselhoff to pay a $189,000 legal tab Opri racked up representing his ex-wife, Pamela Bach, in their bitter custody battle.

Superior Court Judge Mark A. Juhas issued a written ruling Wednesday denying the motion. Juhas said Opri failed to obtain proper authorization from Bach to go after Hasselhoff.

"There is no evidence that Ms. Hasselhoff ever affirmatively consented to the filing of the motion, and both Ms. Opri's and Ms. Hasselhoff's pleadings are silent in this regard," Juhas wrote. "It is clear, however, that after the pleadings were filed, Ms. Hasselhoff through her [current] attorney [Mark Vincent Kaplan] on at least two separate occasions indicated that she did not consent to the motions."

Juhas also didn't buy Opri's assertion that her retainer agreement with Bach gave the lawyer the right to recoup costs from Hasselhoff.

Bach, 43, wound up firing Opri after Hasselhoff, 55, won custody of the former couple's two teenage daughters.

Juhas' decision means Opri will likely sue Bach to recover the legal fees. Another of Bach's former attorneys, Gary Mitchell, sued the sometime actress on Thursday, saying he represented her for six months in 2006 and was never paid for his services.

Opri's been logging lots of court time in an effort to pad her bank account.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles judge agreed to review a request by Opri seeking $600,000 from Larry Birkhead for representing him in his paternity case against Anna Nicole Smith.

Opri and Birkhead ended up parting ways in March, before DNA revealed the Kentucky native as the father of the late model's infant daughter, Dannielynn, and a Bahamian court awarded him custody. He sued Opri in June for fraud and legal malpractice, claiming that she wrongfully withheld $505,250 from a media deal with the Bravo network. Opri countered by arguing that the cash belonged to her in the first place to pay his hefty tab.

Superior Court Judge Charles C. Lee said he would issue a ruling within the next 10 days on Opri's motion to submit the matter to arbitration.

Lee also kept in place a previous order freezing Opri's account, thus preventing her from spending a dime of the disputed sum, but said he was having trouble deciding where to stash the cash in the interim.

"The difficulty appears to be that any such account must be in the name of a person with a Social Security Number attached, and both Opri and Birkhead wish to be that person," wrote Lee.

"The judge can do one of three things," Birkhead lawyer Michael Trope told E! Online. “He can send everything to an arbitrator. He can deny her arbitration request entirely and everything would be decided in his courtroom. Or he could send the fee dispute to...an arbitrator and take the other claims that are there and have those decided in his courtroom.”

Birkhead’s other claims against Opri include conversion, breach of fiduciary duty and malpractice.

A rep for Opri was not immediately available for comment.

Meanwhile, a hearing is scheduled for Friday in a related motion filed by Smith's attorney and partner, Howard K. Stern, asking for a preliminary injunction barring the release of a 1994 videotape showing Texas surgeons performing breast augmentation on the onetime E! reality star. A temporary restraining order has already been issued.