Bayou Cornehole - How deep does it go?

First, I want to make a comment bump:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Bayou Corne - Comment Bump, Thursday, April 9 2015...": 

Calvin Fayard is on so many PSC/Class Counsels such as the Galveston Oil Spill, BP, this one here and others that one must wonder how many hours are in his day, 24 would not be enough. The pattern of poor notice, exaggerated settlement amounts vs. reality, and complete lack of transparency seems to be widespread. I expect that there will be plenty of objections filed against the BP Class Counsel fees. Too many good attorneys are watching and very pissed about the game being played. The PSC game of hide the ball and collect $600,000,000 as long as you fight to PRESERVE a horrible Class Settlement that looks as though BP drafted it w/o input from any Plaintiff's attorneys! 

All salient points but the real issue, even above the hidden billing methods, is what level of collusion is going on with the Good Ole' Boys and their oil and gas industry defendants.  I've already shown evidence of this in the Wisner story but I think the Bayou Corne case could be even worse.  

Here's why...

On Monday I sent the following questions to A. Shelby Easterly, III, the court Special Master in the Bayou Corne settlement:

- What is your current and past relationship with Connie M. Easterly, an employee of Kean Miller who publicly lists employment (connie.easterly@keanmiller.com) with Kean Miller, the law firm representing Texas Brine in the Bayou Corne settlement?  

- Were you in contact with Ms. Connie M. Easterly during the litigation period for Bayou Corne and at any point did you discuss the case with her?  

- Did you disclose to the court any relationship, present our past, that you had with Ms. Connie M. Easterly before you were chosen as Special Master for the Bayou Corne case?

- Did Calvin Fayard disclose to you, and/or, were you aware that James E. Kuhn, who served as council for Texas Brine was a former law partner of Mr. Fayard's? 

Predictably, I received no response.

I believe Connie M. Easterly is the former, possibly current, wife of Shelby Easterly.  I don't know if this officially constitutes a conflict of interest but I would think it should have been disclosed to the court before he applied for the Special Master position.  

But then again, in this state a judge could get caught in the sack with a juror and it would be overlooked.  Now a judge, a prosecuting attorney and a juror....that ménage à trois may raise eyebrows...maybe.  

Also note that Calvin Fayard was formerly a law partner of one of Texas Brine's current attorneys,  James E. "Jimmy" Kuhn.  Kuhn also served as a judge for Louisiana's First Circuit Court of Appeals. 

According to a 2014 article from The Hayride (which I will begrudgingly link to) , Kuhn actually wrote the opinion from the First Circuit which absolved Fayard of campaign finance violations revolving around his daughter, Caroline's, run for Lt. Governor back in 2010.  

Clearly Kuhn should have recused himself in that case but...hey...it's Looziana.  We're so bad, Harvard couldn't even measure us on their corruption scale.

You see....in our state it's very clear that some people are not only above the law....they actually own it.

Sidebar:  Hey!  I need all of you to do me a favor....to help me conduct an experiment, if you will.  Go to Nola.com...oh let's say.....here.  And type in the following comment:

Where does Fred Heebe come in to play on all this?

Just cut and paste that sentence into a comment....or make up your own comment but make sure you have "Fred Heebe" in there.

Get back to me on the results....as in did the comment actually make it through.  You can post the results in this post's comment thread.  Gracias amigos/amigas.   

DHECC - Comment Bump, April 7, 2015 - Another snapshot of the Louisiana Good Ole' Boy network

Kevin has left a new comment on your post "The Good Ole' Boys": 

Looking at Shelby Easterly's supplemental disclosure, he says he served as counsel for Calvin C. Fayard, Jr. and D. Blayne Honeycutt in “a civil matter” that concluded some 9 years ago. Yet, he doesn’t bother to disclose the identity of any parties, the docket number or even the court where the civil matter was filed. Nor does he disclose the nature of the matter. 

I guess he expected that the court and all the parties to the Sinkhole litigation had already read the article in the Louisiana Record which somewhat identified a New Orleans suit against Fayard and Honeycutt where Easterly defended his friends against allegations that Fayard failed to pay another class action lawyer what he was owed; that Fayard allegedly breached written agreements on fees; and, a few other allegations about the kind of stuff a special master might have to get involved with in a class action settlement.

“A civil matter” ordinarily means 1 civil matter; right?

Whether by design or not, Easterly failed to disclose another civil matter in which he represented Calvin C. Fayard, Jr. He left out the fact he represented Fayard against a class action brought by the same class action attorney who filed suit against Fayard and Honeycutt in New Orleans. The suit in Baton Rouge (05-265, Middle District of Louisiana) involved allegations of mishandling the Defined Benefit Program (retirement funds) for the Fayard law firm employees. I’m emailing Jason a copy of the Answer filed by Easterly as attorney for Fayard.

Also, Easterly did other work for Fayard on the Defined Benefit Program. I'm emailing Jason a letter I received via FedEx from Easterly in late-2005. I redacted the personal info. Notice he mentions Carolyn Mistoler by name in the letter. She's Fayard's bookkeeper. Easterly knows her well, as I’ll explain below.

Fayard has previously billed Mistoler's time and expenses to class action cases as a paralegal. She had no education, training or experience that would qualify her as a paralegal. The work she did in those cases was not paralegal work and didn’t benefit the class. Fayard billed for several secretarial and other staff members as paralegals to class action cases to be reimbursed at the higher pay rates.

That might be an avenue for the Bayou Corne objectors to pursue, although I have a feeling it will be rejected out of hand. If I were them, I would ask the court to allow me to examine the billing records to see if Fayard billed staff and bookkeepers as paralegals or other higher-paying positions, and whether or not the Special Master approved this. I would ask for proof of their education, training and experience as a paralegal or law clerk or whatever. Fayard billed me as a law clerk to 1 case even though I’ve never been to law school.

If I were these Bayou Corne residents, I would ask the judge and all the attorneys in the courtroom the following: If you received a notice from a lawyer in a case that said, at some unknown date in the future, s/he was going to file an important pleading asking the court to approve payment of fees that are going to come out of your client’s funds, would you accept that notice as adequate and sufficient enough to protect your client’s rights and to prepare any response to that pleading without any further notice, and without ever having a chance to review that important pleading? They all know the answer is “no.” That’s what happened to class members here with the fee motion.

One more thing about the Easterly and Fayard relationship the Special Master possibly should have disclosed.

Train Car, LLC. It was an LLC created in 2004 by Easterley's then-wife, Connie, and another employee. They made Carolyn Mistoler, Fayard's bookkeeper, the Manager of the LLC. They used the Fayard law office address as the address for the LLC. Shelby Easterly notarized/signed the documents. I’m sending Jason a copy of those, too.

On the same date Train Car, LLC was formed, there was another document signed by Easterly that designated W. Hugh Sibley as an "agent" of the LLC with the authority to bind the LLC, borrow against its assets, sell its assets, etc. Sibley was actually using the LLC to bank the money he was using to build an enormous mansion in Hammond. 

Some of you may remember reading news articles in 2009 or 2010 about Sibley laundering cocaine money for the cartel. He owed Harrah's Entertainment millions in gambling debts in 2004 - they even filed a lien or intervention in a class action case because Sibley had assigned his fees in several cases to Harrah’s. Sibley also owed the IRS millions at the time. Fayard and Mistoler were aware of these problems.

In fact, the IRS just happened to issue liens to several financial institutions when Hugh was about to transfer some money to the LLC account from his personal account. Through ensuing litigation, the IRS learned of the connections between all the people involved with Train Car, LLC. Once informed by the IRS that their relationships were going to be the subject of discovery and fact testimony, Carolyn Mistoler suddenly removed her name from the records, the address of the LLC was changed from Fayard’s office to Hugh’s office in Greensburg, and the IRS suit was settled.

Calvin: why don't you tell the readers the story about the lessons you learned from "Old Mr. Easterly" like to one about the kind of people who should do yard work?

Believe me, this is just scraping the surface of the "Good Ol' Boy Network".  The real dirty is these guys' relationships with federal judges from Haik to Barbier.

This Bayou Corne settlement is just one more notch in Fayard and company's belt and yet one more glaring example of the level of corruption that permeates this state's judicial system.

Do we have corrupt politicians in Louisiana?  A big Sarah Palin "You betcha!"  But the corruption among our pols is lilliputian in contrast to what's happening sub rosa in our courts.