Associated PressA trial to determine whether U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson’s wife committed bigamy when she wed the congressman has been delayed because she required emergency surgery to remove breast implants.
The trial had been scheduled for Thursday in Orlando but is now set for March.
Lolita Grayson had been suffering chest pains. When she went to a hospital to get checked out, she was told she needed emergency surgery to remove the leaking implants and scar tissue, according to court papers filed this week.
The surgery was Monday.
“Due to this medical emergency, wife is unable to prepare for or attend the trial,” her attorney, Mercedes Wechsler, said in a court filing.
Lolita Grayson sued her husband for divorce last year after 24 years of marriage. But Alan Grayson says the marriage was invalid because she was never divorced from her first husband at the time of their union in 1990.
Lolita Grayson says she was divorced.
The delay is the latest twist in the contentious divorce proceedings between the Democratic congressman from Florida’s 9th District and his wife.
Last year, Lolita Grayson filed court papers alleging Alan Grayson had failed to pay for repairs for the 5,300-square-foot Orlando house where she is living with their four children. The roof was leaking, broken windows were allowing rain to get inside and the house had a significant mold problem because of the moisture, she said.
Grayson’s attorneys denied the allegation, saying the congressman was spending more than $10,000 a month on the home’s mortgage, child support, utilities and household expenses.
Last March, Lolita Grayson was granted a restraining order against the congressman after she said Alan Grayson pushed her against the front door of their home when he stopped by the house. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office investigated the claim and decided there was not enough evidence to file charges. A video of the encounter taken by a Grayson staffer shows the Lolita Grayson pushing her tall husband.
In a related matter, Wechsler asked the judge this week if she could withdraw from the case as Lolita Grayson’s attorney. Lolita Grayson brought along another attorney last weekend to a mediation session with her husband, and “it’s clear the wife has retained and/or paid other counsel to represent her in this case,” Wechsler said in a court filing.
Neither Wechsler nor the other attorney, Tushaar Desai, responded to requests for comment. Grayson’s attorney, Mark NeJame, raised doubts about the timing of the surgery.
“Of course, if she has a true medical complication, we want her to take care of it,” NeJame said. “It is ironic that in all the decades she has had the implants, on the very eve of a hearing in which there is a chance this purported marriage will be invalidated, that this issue surfaces.”
