OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
6:14 PM – Monday, November 17, 2025
More than 30 years after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were brutally stabbed to death, the estate of O.J. Simpson has agreed to pay Goldman’s father, Fred, marking the largest single settlement yet in one of the most enduring legal sagas in American history.
However, the amount owed to the Goldman family now far exceeds the value of O.J.’s estate, which the executor has estimated at only about $500,000 to $1 million. Since Fred Goldman has filed a claim for tens of millions of dollars — reflecting the original judgment plus decades of interest — the estate is far too small to cover the full amount.
After required expenses and other obligations are paid, Goldman is expected to receive only a fraction of what is owed — likely a few hundred thousand dollars at most, based on the executor’s statements. Under Nevada law, where Simpson’s estate is being probated, administrative costs of running the estate and other priority obligations must be paid before unsecured claims like Goldman’s.
“It won’t be $58M plus interest, but it will be a voluntary payment. That’s the point,” the estate’s executor, Malcolm LaVergne, said on Monday.
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Goldman was a 25-year-old aspiring actor and model friend of Nicole’s who worked as a waiter at Mezzaluna, an upscale Italian restaurant in Brentwood, Los Angeles. On the night he was murdered alongside her, he had stopped by Nicole’s condo on Bundy Drive to return a pair of eyeglasses her mother had accidentally left at the restaurant earlier that evening.
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Meanwhile, court documents filed on Friday in Clark County District Court show that Malcolm LaVergne, executor of Simpson’s estate, “formally accepted” a creditor’s claim from Ron’s father, Fred Goldman, for $57,997,858.12 — a figure that reflects the original 1997 civil judgment plus decades of accrued interest.
Simpson, the Hall-of-Famer running back turned actor, with notable appearances in films like “Capricorn One,” was acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and Goldman in a criminal trial that transfixed the nation. Two years later, however, a separate civil jury found him liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to the victims’ families.
In that civil case, the issue didn’t revolve around whether the defendant committed a crime, but whether he could be held financially liable for causing someone’s death. Simpson paid only a fraction of that amount before his death from prostate cancer on April 10, 2024, at age 76.
Under California law, the unpaid judgment accrued 10% simple interest annually, causing the debt to balloon over nearly three decades. By the time Simpson died, the California-based Goldman family calculated the total owed had exceeded $117 million.
Fred Goldman, now 85, called the development “bittersweet” in a brief statement to reporters outside his home.
LaVergne, Simpson’s estate executor who initially vowed after his passing that the Goldman family would “get zero,” reversed course in recent months, explaining that his team was working cooperatively to resolve the matter once and for all. However, full payment could still take years and will most likely require liquidating Simpson’s remaining memorabilia, royalties, and pension benefits.
A status hearing is scheduled for January 2026, and the Brown family has filed a separate claim, but no agreement has been announced yet.
The settlement closes a painful chapter for the Goldman family while reigniting national conversation about the 1994 murders, the media-frenzied Bronco chase, and a trial that shocked America for years and decades to come.
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