Jamie McCourt's Lawyers Claim Frank Falsified Dodgers Ownership Documents

In a stunning turn in Frank and Jamie McCourt's battle for control of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Jamie's lawyers filed a motion Thursday asserting that attorneys for her estranged husband falsified the couple's marital property agreements and inserted a clause giving Frank sole ownership of the Dodgers in the event of a divorce.

The marital property agreement is at the center of the couple's high-profile divorce case, which is scheduled to go to trial later this month. Frank has long claimed that the agreement placed the couple's multiple residences in Jamie's name and gave him control of the franchise if the couple divorced.

The McCourts actually signed two versions of the MPA -- one to comply with Massachusetts law, and another for California, and both were signed in late March and early April of 2004. Both sides agree that the MPA was executed to shield the family's properties from litigation or creditors -- but Jamie has insisted that she never agreed to give up any ownership stake in the Dodgers.

Thursday's motion seems to validate her story. According to the filing, there's a key discrepancy between the original copies of the two MPAs, which were both signed by Jamie on March 31, 2004. The Massachusetts version included a section giving Frank sole ownership of the team in the event of the divorce, while the original California version did not. According to Jamie's lawyers, however, the clause giving Frank rights to the team was never in any earlier draft of the MPA, and was only added a day before the documents were signed.

Moreover, Jamie's attorneys cite forensic analysis of the MPAs and word processing records to show that the California version was later doctored to include the section giving Frank ownership of the Dodgers in the event of a divorce. The changes were made without Jamie's knowledge and were only discovered in the last month, when both Frank and Lawrence Silverstein, the couple's longtime attorney, admitted that there were, in fact, two versions of the document.

Jamie's lawyers contend that she never actually saw the "final" California version until the divorce proceedings began last year, and was told previously by Silverstein that the California version was kept in his law firm's vault in Boston.

Frank's lawyers fired back later Thursday by calling Jamie's case "a loser."

In recent depositions, Frank and Silverstein attributed the discrepancy to "typographical" and "clerical" errors. Jamie's lawyers are now asking Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Scott Gordon to admit the original California MPA into evidence for the case, which has already attracted some of the highest profile -- and most expensive -- litigators in the country.

Jamie's legal team now includes Dennis Wasser, a noted Hollywood divorce specialist, and David Boies, who represented Al Gore in his Supreme Court case against George Bush over the 2000 presidential election. Frank has retained Stephen Susman, a Houston trial specialist who successfully defended Little Caesars and Clear Channel Communications in landmark anti-trust cases, as well as family law veteran Sorrell Trope, who has represented Cary Grant, Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman, among others, in their divorces.