Marvin Mitchelson, the flamboyant and controversial divorce lawyer who pioneered the right to "palimony" with a landmark lawsuit against actor Lee Marvin in the 1970s and two decades later spent more than two years in federal prison for tax fraud, has died. He was 76.
Mitchelson, who had suffered from heart problems and skin cancer in recent years, died Saturday night in a Beverly Hills hospice of complications from those diseases, said attorney Cary W. Goldstein.
Since handling his first high-publicity divorce case in 1964 on behalf of actor James Mason's wife, Pamela, Mitchelson established himself as Hollywood's premiere divorce lawyer.
His clients were a virtual who's who of celebrities, including Sonny Bono, Tony Curtis, Mel Torme, Stephen Stills and Carl Sagan. But Mitchelson was known primarily as a "woman's lawyer," representing Joan Collins, Bianca Jagger, Rhonda Fleming and Connie Stevens, among others.
His most famous case was that of Michelle Triola Marvin, who had abandoned her nightclub singing career to be Lee Marvin's live-in companion and, after they broke up, demanded half the actor's $3.6-million income made during the six years they lived together. Although they were never married, she had legally changed her surname to Marvin.
A Superior Court rejected the breach-of-contract lawsuit Mitchelson filed for her and a state appeals court affirmed the dismissal.
But in late 1976 the California Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling stating that unmarried, cohabitating partners could legally seek to share in a partner's property when they separated, if the partners had express written or oral contracts, and that judges also could consider the partners' conduct to determine whether a contract was implied.
"I'm not trying to paint myself as a big crusader, but this was a case I believed in," he told People magazine. "I was waiting for one like it to come along. I believed that a woman who has lived exactly as a wife with everything but an $8 marriage license should have the same rights."
Despite Mitchelson's new-law victory, Marvin vs. Marvin wasn't over.
In 1979, after a 10-week trial, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that there was neither an express nor an implied contract between the Marvins and that Triola Marvin was not entitled to anything.
The judge awarded Triola Marvin $104,000 to learn new job skills, but in 1981 the state appeals court overturned that award.
