Shelly Sterling's Lawsuit Against V. Stiviano Set to Go to Trial March 9

A judge scheduled trial early next year for ex-Clippers co-owner Shelly Sterling in her lawsuit against the woman she claims lured her husband into an affair that led to the sale of their team.

Judge Richard Fruin said he hoped a hearing set for Friday in a countersuit filed by V. Stiviano did not delay the case.

Trial is tentatively set for March 9.

Fruin said he would consider separating Stiviano’s countersuit from the main case, so that any appeal of his ruling Friday on Shelly Sterling’s bid to have it dismissed will not put the entire case on hold.

Shelly Sterling is the estranged wife of billionaire Donald Sterling, the Beverly Hills-based real estate mogul who formerly owned the Clippers with his spouse. Her complaint, filed March 7, describes Stiviano as a woman who “engages in conduct designed to target, befriend, seduce and then ... receives as gifts transfers of wealth from older men whom she targets for such purposes.”

Stiviano has used the names Vanessa Perez, Monica Gallegos and Maria Valdez, the suit states. She met Sterling at the February 2010 Super Bowl and began a sexual relationship with him that year, the suit states.

The lawsuit seeks all the return of all cash, real estate, cars or other belongings considered community property.

Stiviano’s defamation countersuit names as defendants the Sterlings, the Clippers and former Clippers president Andy Roeser. Filed Aug. 21 in Los Angeles Superior Court, it alleges that in April and May the defendants called Stiviano a “thief” who by “theft, trick and device obtained funds and other properties from Donald Sterling.”

In their court papers, lawyers for Shelly Sterling maintain the part of the countersuit against their client should be tossed. The attorneys say Stiviano has presented no evidence Shelly Sterling made any defamatory statements against her.

“In fact, (Shelly) is still left guessing as to what defamatory statements she is alleged to have made,” according to the court papers of the lawyers for Shelly Sterling.

Any remarks Shelly Sterling made concerning the lawsuit against Stiviano were protected speech under the litigation privilege, according to her lawyers’ court papers.

In interviews following the release of the Donald Sterling recordings -- which earned him a lifetime ban from the NBA and led to a dispute over the proposed $2 billion sale of the Clippers -- Stiviano denied having a sexual relationship with Sterling. Sterling, however, has described his comments on the tapes as being the result of a heated exchange during a “lovers’ quarrel.”

--City News Service

PHOTO Patch file photo.

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