I believe that was part of it, but he also had assets in ERISA-qualified retirement accounts that could not be seized to satisfy the civil judgement: https://mwpatton.com/asset-protection-articles/oj-simpson-te...

That didn't work, since he wrote the "if I did it" book much later and had had to give all the proceeds to the victim's family.

He didn't write that. From what I understand, the corporation just paid him to say he wrote it. He never actually had the rights to the book, because you can't hold copyright on something just by saying you wrote it.

A bankruptcy judge later transferred the rights from the publisher to the Goldman family. Why I have no idea. But it isn't like it was "taken" from Mr. Simpson or he "had to give" the proceeds. He got his money from the publisher and later a bankruptcy judge decided the publisher could be parted with their income stream.

>He never actually had the rights to the book, because you can't hold copyright on something just by saying you wrote it.

Obviously you can, if you negotiate it with the ghostwriter - who would just be your employee anyway or even be a team of writers, so all the copyrights can remain with you - same way Marvel has the copyright for stuff people wrote for them.

So you think the publisher assigned copyright to a guy with a huge liability settlement against him just so he could immediately assign it back to them?

Rather than the obvious "here sign this form that says we can publish a book about this and put your name on it"?

I'm saying that the book could be his, or his agent's, initiative, not the publisher, and he might have even shopped around for publishers.

Except the facts are well known. The ghost writer who was commissioned by the publisher has even talked about writing the book.

It did work but the GP is only sort of correct. OJ didn’t move to Florida to avoid repaying the debt, he did it to avoid losing his house. In Florida plaintiffs can’t seize a defendant’s primary residence or force its sale to pay a judgement.

Florida has a homestead exemption, so it’s standard practice for fallen rich people to buy a home in Florida and then reverse mortgage it or do something similar for income.

Didn't know that, some things make a lot more sense now such as Citadel's Ken Griffin buying a $120M mansion in Florida and Trump buying Maralago.

Florida's exemption is one of the nicest in the country:

>Florida has one of the most generous homestead exemptions found in any state. Under the Florida exemption system, homeowners may exempt an unlimited amount of value in their home or other property covered by the homestead exemption. However, the property cannot be larger than half an acre in a municipality or 160 acres elsewhere.

Texas has one similar:

>You can protect an unlimited amount of equity in your principal residence. It applies to properties on 10 acres or less in a city, town, or village or 100 acres or less in the country (families can double this to 200 acres).

If you are "high value" and potentially at risk of a lawsuit, it is worth considering relocating to a state with favorable bankruptcy laws.

I think ken's mansion in florida has more to do with the company's move from chicago to miami after people kept getting mugged in chicago.

that and to cover for his failures in politics