Family Spurns Plea To Drop O.J. Lawsuits

O.J. Simpson’s attorney Thursday urged the victims’ loved ones to drop their wrongful death suits against the freed football great - but Ron Goldman’s family vowed to seek their revenge in court.

“It’s not about the money,” said Goldman’s sister, Kim, rejecting lawyer Johnnie Cochran’s plea. “If the only place (Simpson’s) going to suffer is in his pocket, that’s what we’re going to do. If we can’t have him behind bars, if that’s my only hope of some kind of payback, that’s what we’ll do. Nothing is going to make Ron come back.”

Simpson, who was acquitted Tuesday of killing his ex-wife and her friend, has been slapped with three wrongful-death suits - by Goldman’s father, his mother and Nicole Brown Simpson’s family.

And unlike his trial, the football legend could be forced to testify in the civil actions.

Michael Brewer, an attorney for Goldman’s mother, Sharon Rufo, said he planned to serve Simpson with legal papers today demanding the athlete give a deposition Oct. 16.

Speaking to reporters in Cleveland on Thursday, Cochran said, “At some point there should be closure on this. The jury has spoken and I have said to the families, ‘Rethink this - you should look at what the jury said and not pursue these suits.”’

Also Thursday, the lawyer who organized Simpson’s high-powered team of attorneys denied that he tried to organize a plea bargain.

“He had told me he was innocent from the beginning, and he never wavered from that,” Robert Shapiro said. Shapiro said he designed the original trial strategy based on his client’s declaration that he was innocent.

His comments rebutted a statement by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, who said Wednesday that Shapiro had been crafting a manslaughter plea.

And in New York Thursday, the New Yorker magazine announced that former Los Angeles police officer Mark Fuhrman had dropped his libel suit against the publication and writer Jeffrey Toobin over a July 1994 article that spelled out the defense plan to accuse Fuhrman of planting the bloody glove.