Simpson, O J

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    What Happened to Damages That O.J. Simpson Owed to the Victims’ Families?

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    In 1997, a jury in a civil trial awarded the families of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson $33 million. Today, the amount still owed has more than tripled.More than 25 years ago, O.J. Simpson was found liable in civil court for the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, her friend, and was ordered to pay more than $33 million to their families.They have yet to recover the damages.While it is still unclear where things stand with the Brown Simpson family, the Goldman family said its pursuit will not end despite the death of Mr. Simpson on Wednesday. David Cook, a lawyer for Fred Goldman, Ronald’s father, said in an interview on Saturday that he could not elaborate on their plans to acquire the money, but that “the judgment will be pursued as before.” In a previous email, Mr. Cook said that Mr. Simpson “died without penance.” Mr. Goldman could not be reached for comment. Mr. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of Ms. Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in the 1995 criminal trial, but the civil jury in 1997 concluded that he “willingly and wrongfully” caused their deaths, and the unanimous decision included $25 million in punitive damages.Of the total, according to court documents filed in 2022, the Goldman family had received from Mr. Simpson around $132,000.It was unclear if that figure reflected money from the auctioning of Mr. Simpson’s memorabilia, including his Heisman Trophy, which went toward the damages. Proceeds from the book Mr. Simpson wrote, “If I Did It” — in which he described, in hypothetical terms, how the brutal stabbings of Ms. Brown Simpson and Mr. Goldman might have occurred — also went toward the damages.It was also unknown on Saturday how much of the damages the Brown Simpson family had recovered. Mr. Cook declined to respond to specific questions about the money the Goldman family received. But the total is still a fraction of what is owed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Frank Olson, Executive Who Linked O.J. Simpson With Hertz, Dies at 91

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      He negotiated Mr. Simpson’s star turn in commercials, tapping into his football fame, and formed a social bond with him — until there were murder charges. They died on the same day.Frank A. Olson, who as a top executive of Hertz cast the running back O.J. Simpson as the star of the company’s commercials — a corporate marriage that shined up both parties and that lasted two decades, until Mr. Simpson was charged in a double homicide in 1994 — died at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, the same day Mr. Simpson died. Mr. Olson was 91.The cause was complications of Covid, his sons, Christopher and Blake, said.The coincidental timing of the deaths of Mr. Olson, who had steered Hertz through years of corporate turbulence, and Mr. Simpson, the athlete turned pitchman turned infamous criminal defendant, linked the two men in a way that Mr. Olson had once embraced but that he later distanced himself from.More than business partners, Mr. Olson and Mr. Simpson, both San Francisco natives, forged an alliance, beginning in the 1970s, that spoke of that mutually beneficial zone where corporate and social life intertwine. Mr. Olson, an avid golfer, sponsored Mr. Simpson for membership in the private Arcola Country Club in Paramus, N.J., where in 1992 Mr. Simpson, a former Heisman Trophy winner and Pro Football Hall of Famer, became the first Black member.In a letter that Mr. Simpson left at his Los Angeles home before his arrest in the stabbing murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, he listed friends he was sending “love and thanks to.” Mr. Olson was one of them.“I took him places where I think very few Black men had ever been,” Mr. Olson said in the acclaimed 2016 documentary “O.J.: Made in America.”Mr. Simpson was 76 when he died of cancer at his home in Las Vegas.The idea of featuring him in Hertz commercials to symbolize speedy service, beginning in 1974, originated with the company’s ad agency. But because Mr. Simpson was Black and most Hertz customers where white businessmen, the choice made the agency nervous, according to a 1994 article in The Washington Post. So the decision was kicked up to Mr. Olson, who at the time was executive vice president and general manager of the rental-car division. (The company also rented trucks.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Los Angeles, the O.J. Simpson Case Defined a Turbulent Era

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      From the car chase to the verdict, the murder case became an inextricable part of Los Angeles history in the 1990s, and Angelenos to this day still ponder what happened.It would become an indelible memory for those who could not help but watch and watch and watch: a white Ford Bronco steadily traveling along the cleared freeways of Southern California, a trail of police cars not far behind.Its passenger, of course, was O.J. Simpson, and the two-hour chase on June 17, 1994, that interrupted regular programming transfixed a nation.“I watched it until it ended. I wasn’t getting off the TV. Who was getting off the TV on a chase like that?” said Richard Smith, 67, who gathered that day with his family to see it all unfold on television in their South Los Angeles apartment.The saga of Mr. Simpson, from the chase to the criminal trial to the aftermath, would be followed, debated and dissected closely by millions, etching itself into Los Angeles history and thrusting the city into what seemed the center of the universe.On Thursday, as news spread of Mr. Simpson’s death at 76 from cancer, many residents were forced to reminisce about events that felt distinctly personal, touching on issues of race and celebrity that had long hit close to home in Southern California. And the case had played out on their home turf only a handful of years after the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots.Mr. Simpson, at the time, was seen as someone who had transcended the tense and deadly relationship other Black Angelenos had with law enforcement. Soaring above his impoverished beginnings, he had carved out an international show business career and lived in the affluent enclave of Brentwood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Hertz Turned O.J. Simpson Into the ‘Superstar in Rent‐a‐Car’

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      The famous ad campaign paid dividends for both the company and its pitchman, who died on Wednesday.Executives at the rental car company Hertz knew what they wanted to project to potential business travelers in the 1970s: speed, reliability and efficiency.They quickly realized that one man radiated all of those qualities. So they made the football player O.J. Simpson, who died on Wednesday at the age of 76, the first Black star of a national television advertising campaign.“They had a slogan — the Superstar in Rent‐a‐Car — and I was the current reigning superstar as far as the competition was concerned,” Simpson told The New York Times in 1976.The campaign would pay dividends for both the company and its pitchman, who in early Hertz ads was shown racing through an airport terminal and leaping over rope barriers, clutching a briefcase instead of cradling a football. In some of Simpson’s later ads, average Janes and Joes cheered him on as he ran, yelling, “Go, O.J., Go!”At that time, decades before Simpson was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend, he was known for dazzling on the field for the University of Southern California and the Buffalo Bills. His athleticism and speed made Simpson the perfect choice for the Hertz commercials that widened his stardom beyond the gridiron, offering him up as a suave, smiling promoter known to football fans and businessmen alike.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      O.J. Simpson, Athlete Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76

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      He ran to football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies. But his world was ruined after he was charged with killing his former wife and her friend.O.J. Simpson, who ran to fame on the football field, made fortunes as a Black all-American in movies, advertising and television and was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation, died on Wednesday. He was 76.The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media. The announcement did not say where he died.The infamous case, which held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, cleared Mr. Simpson but ruined his world. In 1997, a civil suit by the victims’ families found him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. He paid little of the debt, moved to Florida and struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble.In 2006, he sold a book, “If I Did It,” and a prospective TV interview, giving a “hypothetical” account of murders he had always denied committing. A public outcry ended both projects, but Mr. Goldman’s family secured the book rights, added material imputing guilt to Mr. Simpson and had it published.In 2007, he was arrested after he and other men invaded a Las Vegas hotel room of some sports memorabilia dealers and took a trove of collectibles. He claimed that the items had been stolen from him, but a jury in 2008 found him guilty of 12 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping, after a trial that drew only a smattering of reporters and spectators. He was sentenced to 9 to 33 years in a Nevada state prison. He served the minimum term and was released in 2017.Over the years, the story of O.J. Simpson generated a tide of tell-all books, movies, studies and debate over questions of justice, race relations and celebrity in a nation that adores its heroes, especially those cast in rags-to-riches stereotypes, but has never been comfortable with its deeper contradictions.A complete obituary will appear soon. More