The furor over O.J. Simpson's ill-conceived book will remain a Goldman family affair.
A Florida judge awarded sole publishing rights to the never-published hypothetical tell-all If I Did It to the family of murder victim Ron Goldman, setting aside the Brown family's assertion that it is entitled to a piece of those rights, as well.
Nicole Brown Simpson's relatives, who won their own $24 million wrongful death judgment against Simpson in 1997, will get a portion of the first 10 percent of the book's grosses, if there are any.
"They're both the victims of a horrible tragedy," U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jay Cristol said in court Monday. "It's sad they would be reduced to quibbling with each other instead of working together."
The Goldmans had accused Simpson of fraudulently setting up a bogus company in order to hide the $630,000 (it was originally reported to be upwards of $1 million) he received from HarperCollins for the book, which was originally intended to go hand-in-hand with an interview on Fox to be conducted by publisher Judith Regan, who eventually lost her job after the widely panned project was quashed in November.
Even Simpson referred to the fee he received as "blood money," but the erstwhile murder defendant also said that all the cash was long since spent on bills and taxes.
Judge Cristol determined last month that Simpson had in fact set up a shell corporation—which filed for bankruptcy before the book rights were supposed to be auctioned off—to horde the dough. The jurist then awarded the book rights to the Goldmans on July 2 as part of a settlement with the bankruptcy trustee that took over Simpson's company, Lorraine Brooke Associates.
The trustee, which is responsible for paying off Simpson's creditors, will get 10 percent of the proceeds. Once again, if there are any.
Cristol said that the trustee and the Goldmans could address the court again in 18 months if they have any issues with the way the division of the assets was handled.
"After 13 years of trying to get some justice, today is probably the first time we had any sense of seeing light at the end of the tunnel," family patriarch Fred Goldman said outside the courthouse. "It's gratifying to see."
Goldman attorney David Cook said earlier this month, before the Browns filed their complaint, that the Goldmans planned to rename the book Confessions of a Double Murderer and shop it as an actual tell-all, rather than the what-if scenario that Simpson intended.
"Whether [Simpson] calls it a work of fiction or not, or non-fiction, the fact is that he murdered two people, and I'd like everybody to hear him virtually say it," Fred Goldman told CNN's Anderson Cooper last month.
Cook told reporters after court today that they were meeting with literary agents, publishing houses and movie studios about the project.
"We're very confident," he told the Associated Press. "We will do our level best. Only time will tell."
An attorney for the Brown family, however, said that Monday's decision was a victory for the Goldmans at the Browns' expense. Simpson's former in-laws had been seeking a stake equal to the Goldmans'.
"This book should not be published," Denise Brown, Nicole's sister, told CNN. "I have said this over and over again. It's a manual to commit murder."
A jury awarded the Goldmans $38 million in their civil suit against Simpson and the family maintains that they've barely seen a dime. Earlier this year, a Los Angeles judge ordered Simpson to turn over all future residuals from his past acting jobs and TV and personal appearances to the Goldmans to help mollify the situation.