Slabbed

Gee Aaron I know a few months ago you put your hand on the bible and swore you committed multiple felonies but in your heart of hearts are you really guilty?

I do not begrudge WWL TeeVee airing BrousStar’s last performance (sans silly ear bandage) before he hits the Federal penitentiary, rather it was the attempted image makeover by Eric Paulsen, whose personal feelings for his long time friend in the former Goatherder in Chief ooze throughout the puff interview that I found offensive. It is pathetic to the point where everyone should watch it.

Paulsen’s puff interview makes for a nice compare and contrast with the interview Patsy Brumfield of the North East Mississippi Daily Journal conducted with Dick Scruggs last week, before he went back to prison. Brumfield is a respected print journalist in Mississippi media circles and there were no softball, “Gee Dick are you really guilty” type questions in her account of the interview Scruggs gave her no sir. One thing they did discuss is a part of the prison experience that certainly awaits the former Goatherder in Chief to which I previously alluded in the joyous transfer to a low security facility. Dick Scruggs explains via Patsy:

He spent much of his sentence in Ashland, but when his presence was required in Mississippi for court hearings, he experienced the prison system’s transit process on buses and planes through Oklahoma City and Atlanta.

While he said Oklahoma City’s prison wasn’t too bad, the worst was Atlanta – notoriously where Chicago mobster Al Capone spent some time.

Atlanta was “a hell hole” of filth, noise and 23-hour-per-day lockup where only the orderlies had any freedom because they were responsible for food delivery and cleanup, such as it was, Scruggs says. Read the rest of this entry »

Weren’t the Goatherders blaming Hurricane Katrina in the ACOA litigation in Canada saying Danny Abel’s law office was in “New Orleans”?

In that affidavit, filed by Plaintiff Sampson on 12/26/09 in this proceeding, Chris Yount swears that he served Mr. Whetstone through the City Attorney on April 14th, 2004. However, then Plaintiff Sampson’s Supplemental Memorandum admits on 12/31/2009, that this mistaken or false affidavit was a “mistake” attributable to Hurricane Katrina. No mention of the undisputed fact that Mr.Whetstone was not employed by the City at the time of the attempted service is made. The newly scanned Record Document Numbers 2 and 8 in 04-1052 show that Mr. Yount did not go to the City Attorney’s office on April 14th, 2004 as he swore on 12/26/2009 under penalty of perjury, but Mr. Abel went to the City Attorney’s Office instead, as he acknowledges in his 12/31/09 supplemental memorandum.

Yes it is true Chris Yount is a Goatherder troll from way far back but what attracted me to Sampson v Whetstone was the fact it exhibits another of Danny Abel’s crash and burn civil rights lawsuits against NOPD as I continue with document 59-4:

(F). The Motion filed by attorney Daniel Abel in support of the Confirmation of Default on December 19th, 2006, ( Doc. # 36, Exhibit “1-C”), erroneously states that “the summons and citation were duly served on defendant MICHAELWHETSTONE on 11 February 2005″. This statement is not true, and it also conflicts with the date of service purportedly upon the City Attorney of April 14th, 2004, given by the other Affidavit filed by attorney Daniel Abel in support of the Preliminary Default on July 22, 2005 (Doc. # 18, Exhibit “1-B”). Thus, the two motions and affidavits filed in support of the confirmation of default are inconsistent with, and conflict with, each other.
(G). The Affidavit filed by attorney Daniel Abel in support of the Confirmation of Default on December 19th, 2006, ( Doc. # 36, Exhibit “1-C”), erroneously states in Paragraph 2 that “Whetstone was an officer of the NOPD at all pertinent times hereto”.
(H). The Affidavit filed by attorney Daniel Abel in support of the Confirmation of Default on December 19th, 2006, ( Doc. # 36, Exhibit “1-C”), erroneously states in Paragraph 4 that “service was made on Whetstone, returned, and entered in the docket.”
(I). On the original Complaint filed in 04-1052 (Doc. #1), an incorrect service address is listed for Mr. Whetstone.

Crash and burn at the hands of Judge Engelhardt? Slabbed reports, you decide. Next up some lovely music:

Is there a pattern developing of suing, then demonizing the lawsuit victim in legal pleadings for its own sake? This wouldn’t work for a lawyer that is perceived as squeaky clean ethically but for a bunch that completely lacks clean hands it is especially farcical.  Respected Northshore lawyer Chuck Hughes, himself the subject of a Goatherder inspired lawsuit and Channel 4 attack piece via Gates v Strain explains: Read the rest of this entry »

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Daniel G. “Danny” Abel doing promo for the Trout Point Lodge Cookbook in Canada

Turns out folks William Shakespeare was a true prophet calling the crash and burn of the Legal Department at the Super 8 Motel on Clearview Parkway hundreds of years in advance as MacBeth posited an accurate description of the type of plaintiff’s work being done by the inhabitants of said Legal Department in the now disgraced/disbarred Aaron Broussard and Daniel G. “Danny” Abel. Let’s drill down a bit on the lawyer who’s cases Belo’s WWL TV Channel 4 relentlessly promotes:

• Eric Paulsen v State Farm (Zeroed)
• Shane Gates aka Shane D’Antoni and Danny Abel v Brown (Aaron Broussard headed to prison)
• Webb v Morella (Court Sanctions – Rule 11 FRCP)
• Chisesi v. Auto Club Family Ins. Co (Court Sanctions - frivolous appeal)
  
• ASAP Court Reporting Services v Abel (Deadbeat lawyer, frivolous appeal)
• Shane Gates aka Shane D’Antoni v Strain (Multiple sanctions by US District Judge Stanwood Duval)
• Martin et al v Magee et al (Court sanctions – frivolous appeal)

Suffice it so say there are more such instances but in the interest of time I will not list them but we must update two cases, Magee et al v Abel et al which I introduced yesterday and Webb v Morella plus introduce a new one in Manton et al v Strain et al as Abel has a particular fetish for suing the NOPD and St Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain. Manton v Strain is instructive so let’s begin there as it follows the Goatherder formula:

1. File suit against absolutely everyone every tangentially connected to the wild conspiracy theory being posited that particular day. Of particular interest was the lead council in the 2009 rendition of this suit ended up intervening as a defendant later when Abel and company took over the point.
2. Spectacularly lose the case, appeal the loss and lose that case as well since “Mantons had failed to raise an issue of material fact.”
3. File another suit recycling the allegation from the first suit.
4. Attempt a smear campaign using media outlets such as Belo’s Channel 4 TeeVee except in this case Abel used a conservative website called Human Events for PR dupes to publicize his baseless allegations. That’s OK though because the Human Events people are in good company.
5. Less than one month after Abel’s promo of this suit appeared in Human Events he lost the suit.
6. Defendants file to recover their attorney fees for having to defend against Abel’s frivolous lawsuits.

Wash, rinse, repeat for this is the way of a Goatherder. I hope it is lost on no one that once upon a time Abel was trying to put the gun manufacturers outta business in between collaborating on the literary flops which chronicled his misadventures. Only one words fits folks and that is jackassery and this brings me to latest developments in Webb v Morella (click the pic to nab the full pdf document).

It’s textbook Goatherder abuse of process IMHO: Read the rest of this entry »

One thing these Goatherders are good at folks is cashing in on their media connections as Slabbed has well chronicled the dishonest promotion of Danny Abel’s crash and burn lawsuits by Belo’s Channel 4 WWL Tee Vee. In that case it is a long association with morning anchor Eric Paulsen that provides the in at WWL but the aftermath is a bitch. Proof:

And so no one misses it this blurb from the above complaint adds much greater color to what I’ll term an unfortunate domestic incidence involving a certain Tee Vee news personality.

Indeed Slabbed knows all but as we like to say here in Mississippi wait ’til you see the whites of their eyes….. Read the rest of this entry »

Vaughn Perret, Daniel G. “Danny” Abel and Charles Leary posing for the business media in Nova Scotia at Trout Point Lodge

Are we noticing a trend with the Legal Department at the Super 8 Motel on Clearview Parkway and the media yet folks? It is all here on these pages:

• Luncheons with Ashton Phelps after which the Times Picayune stopped covering major aspects of the corruption scandal in Jefferson Parish.
• Public records requests from Val Bracy at Fox 8 that never resulted in any news stories despite the fact one of the returns revealed Aaron Broussard was conducting business for First Bank and Trust on Parish of Jefferson letterhead. Lee Zurik was Bracy’s boss during that time frame.
• Travel media in Canada taking payola for promoting Aaron Broussard and Danny Abel’s business interests at the resort at Trout Point in Nova Scotia.
• Glowing reviews from the Times Picayune circa 2001 openly touting Aaron Broussard’s connection to the Resort at Trout Point. Later repeating these same facts in the news resulted in multiple lible suits against NOLA area media outlets including Slabbed New Media by Broussard’s business agents in Nova Scotia, Charles leary and Vaughn Perret.
• Letters to the daughters of connected local political types like Amy Sneed, formerly of WDSU, which illustrate the much deeper social relationships that compromise most of the NOLA main stream media.
• Promotion of lawsuits filed by The Goatherders where they serve as plaintiffs or provide representation such as this Travel scam lawsuit by Carl Finley promoted by Uptown Jewish Women on Fox 8 that crashed and burned or the infamous Gates v Strain where Slabbed exposed the disingenious reporting by Channel 4 on the various lawsuits against St Tammany Parish officialdom filed by Abel’s “son” Shane Gates aka Shane D’Antoni.

The last bullet point brings me back to 2010 and a family on the Northshore that found themselves in a legal pickle involving the ownership of the lot upon which their house sat as Channel 4′s Dennis Woltering explains:

Butch and Nicole Martin say their home here in Abita Springs is in many ways everything they have always wanted.

“The house is beautiful,” Butch Martin said. “We absolutely love it.”

Trouble is, when they had some financial troubles and were forced to try to sell it, they discovered they probably don’t own the lot where the house sits.

“We own the house, but not the yard,” Nicole Martin said.

A buyer was ready to purchase their home more than a year ago, but then two days before closing the buyer’s title, the insurance company notified the Martins that the sale could not go through.

“We got a phone call to notify us that we had a bad title, and we actually didn’t even own the property,” Butch Martin said.

The Martins say they now believe that the property under their house was taken from the heirs of the original landowner, William Nill.

“The property was basically stolen,” Butch Martin said.

But this short snippet from Woltering’s story does not do the story justice so I feel compelled to embed the link to Woltering’s report on the fleecing of the Martins and their title insurance carrier Fidelity National because the Martin’s were hosed as it is clear Northshore lawyer Bill Magee engaged in specious land transactions around a decade ago. Read the rest of this entry »

My last post on this topic of the recent WWL TeeVee profile of Shane Gates spurred a reader to do a bit of docket diving on PACER on the civil case Gates v Strain and what we found raises even more questions about Mike Perlstein’s 2 part made for TeeVee News special report on the arrest of Shane Gates in November 2006 and injuries he sustained in the incident.  You see folks, part of what made Part 2 of Perlstein’s report ring so hollow was that all the legal experts Perlstein quotes, including WWL’s own in house expert Chick Foret, presented a version of the related civil case that did not compare with the court record itself.  No court document illustrates the disconnect better than Gates v Strain document #196, order and opinion by Judge Stanwood Duval.  Before I quote from that document, let’s visit with Part 2 of Mike Perlstein’s report on the arrest of Goatherder Shane Gates titled Attorney says justice intentionally stalled in deputy beating case:

Gates’ lawyers got a speedy acquittal by presenting a very different picture. An expert witness said the chase actually lasted for only six-tenths of a mile and 80 seconds. The DWI allegations were contradicted by the fact that Gates was pulled over just minutes after leaving a car dealership finance office after buying a new Pontiac.

“The jury in St. Tammany Parish did not buy the DA’s theory of his case when it was tried,” Williams said. “They came back in almost record time as to a not guilty verdict.”

Did you get the message folks? You know, the one where Gates was acquitted on his felony DWI charge? Not so fast as it turns out the only Felony charge Gates faced was Unlawful flight but let’s circle that for now as we continue:

“The district attorney should not be prosecuting the victim,” Williams said. “The district attorney should be prosecuting the perpetrators.”

Williams is representing Gates in a civil rights lawsuit in federal court. That lawsuit was filed in October 2007, 11 months after the fateful traffic stop. But that suit has been put on hold because the St. Tammany District Attorney’s Office continues to prosecute Gates.

Gates’ attorneys believe St. Tammany authorities are intentionally stalling justice. One of those attorneys is the retired chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Pascal Calogero.

In the immortal words of AMV politely telling TheRiot to go to hell.

You’re entitled to your opinion but not your facts. Read the rest of this entry »

Welp folks, looks like WWL TeeVee’s Eric Paulsen has fed his coworker Mike Perlstein a sweeps month turd sandwich that will likely be a bit hard going down.  What can I say but this series of posts will have a little something for everyone in Magnum’s partner James Williams plus Paulsen’s Goatherder friends Danny Abel and Shane Gates aka Shane D’Antoni as Perlstein takes a crack at Gates v Strain, promoting a drunk driver with a history of suing for police brutality.  To tell the sad tale of TeeVee news gone wild we must first show the Perlstein report on the subject:

Let’s take these news stories from the PACER beat in reverse order.  First up is Gordon Russell’s story about the latest defense filing in USA v Titus, which included remarks from Slabbed favorite Dane Ciolino of the Loyola Law School.  Essentially Titus is claiming there was a verbal sidecar to his plea deal with regards to the forfeiture provisions among other things.  Having watched the crushing of Jamie Perdigao a few years back I don’t think this latest motion from Team Titus is going very far.

Moving right along Judge Head took little time in denying Broussard’s motion to postpone his trial per this story from the PACER beat filed by Drew Broach.  Judge Head, like the rest of us watched the latest installment of the Aaron Broussard cancer special on the TeeVee and found the assertions in Team Broussard’s delay motion filed by attorney Robert Jenkins to be a bit lacking on the fact side since no affidavits were submitted by either Broussard or more important his doctors. Even worse is the persistent street talk that crushing Broussard and Wilkinson is simply a prelude to rolling up Jim Ward and Fred Heebe so Aaron isn’t even star of the show which is potentially worse news for the unrepentant drama queens that are the Goatherders.

That said I’ll put on my Carnac hat and predict Eric Paulsen at WWL TeeVee will try one more time to prettify his friend with another prostate cancer special on the Toolman show like the one he treated us to earlier this year.  For added dramatic effect perhaps Broussard will break down and cry like a crocodile such as he did in September 2005 on the national TeeVee between telling whoppers on Meet the Press.

Finally I watched the last Parish Council meeting and was happy to see the Times Picayune’s Bob Ross picked up the $325,000 taxpayer funded donation to JPAS, which can no long collect the tax that was previously dedicated to the organization, locally famous as a cesspool of nepotism.  Left to their own devices the folks at JPAS would singlehandedly bankrupt Jefferson Parish with the boondoggle Performing Arts Center leading the way.  Times are tough in Jefferson Parish as teachers are losing their jobs so my feeling is if JPAS can’t fund themselves then they need to close the doors and I say that as a patron of the arts here in Mississippi.

That said the T-P beat Krewe missed something important at the last meeting and it is my pleasure to roll it out here as there was a very curious motion from the floor by Councilman Chris “Mini Me” Roberts that merits special attention because there is evidently trouble in paradise and for that we need to visit with Ross’ last story on the Charter Change Committee to set this up: Read the rest of this entry »

Trout Point Lodge Owners Vaughn Perret, Danny Abel and Charles Leary

In part 1 of this series I covered the genesis of Trout Point development and the associated fleecing of the ACOA by our three amigos Danny Abel, Vaughn Perret and Charles Leary. The fallout was slow in developing though as certain employees at the ACOA that were involved with the La Farme D’Acadie disaster actually died in the interim and the ACOA was not especially diligent in pursuing repayment of the tax money given to the 3 American partners. When the ACOA filed suit Trout Point did not contest it and a default judgment was entered.  Later the default was set aside and the litigation began a tortuous path in the Canadian court system. It came to a head in 2008.

I highlighted the entire ACOA disaster in several posts but this one has received the most attention and for good reason as the lawsuits involving Leary, Abel and Perret and the  ACOA heated back up and one of the major issues turned on exactly who owned La Ferme D’Acadie.  Let”s review shall we:

In June 1998 the plaintiff, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, made a “repayable contribution” to a partnership involving the defendants, in order to assist in the startup of a cheesemaking and tourism business. The partnership was subsequently dissolved and incorporated by the former partners, and part of the business was moved to another location. In September 2001, the plaintiff declared that the partnership was in default of the repayable contribution agreement. The plaintiff launched an action in June 2002, the defendants being Mr. Leary, his former partners and the partnership itself.

Like I said one of the sticking points was the disclosure of the owners of La Ferme D’Acadie, which Leary claims is the Dairy Farm portion of the Nova Scotia operations and despite the fact Abel’s name evidently appeared on the paperwork to get the loan Leary was insistent Abel was not involved and the gyrations are simply stunning as we continue from the court opinion: Read the rest of this entry »

Author Peter Brown was kind enough to stop in with us last month to let us know that his former co-author Danny Abel was suing him for money over a book that flopped and lost big.  I’ve laid the groundwork for this post with important background on the defacto legal partnership between Trout Point owner and former Broussard Parish Council aid Danny Abel and Aaron Broussard that can be found here and here.  We roll WWL-TeeVee’s Eric Paulsen and Broussard political hack/lawyer Carl Finley into the mix here.  In that last link you’ll get a real sense that Shane Gates aka Shane D’Antoni is a professional plaintiff along the lines of  Abel’s Trout Point Lodge partners Vaughn Perret and Charles Leary and this is certainly the case folks.  In fact in Paulsen Gates was described as an employee of Abel’s. It so so much more perverse than that folks so we must circle back to the obituary of Danny Abel’s father Glynn to understand the doings:

Survivors include his sister, Freda Abel Harper; son, Daniel Glynn Abel of New Orleans, La; two grandchildren, Shane M. Gates, and Christine E. Hymel, both of New Orleans, LA; and one great-grandson, Grafton Gabriel Gates of New Orleans, LA.

So is Gates a blood descendant of Glynn Abel? No folks, Danny adopted Shane along with his wife Christine, who goes by her maiden name in the obituary.  So I guess this means that Gates and Hymel have a brother-sister type of marriage and Abel is the tie that binds it all providing Gates with a free ride for over a decade.  Gates may well be some sort of distant cousin as described in Matt Labash’s pieces on Abel for the Weekly Standard but there is some serious perversion going on right here folks. Lest I digress.

The bottom line here is if it is true that Outgunned was a complete flop and judging from the reviews it is easy to see why then Abel and Gates have no case. Brown claims to be unbalanced and on some heavy meds, Gates is a complete poseur that is about as well-respected as a common street whore and Abel’s suit against the gun manufacturers was ill-conceived from the start. With that background laid I’m proud to announce that Aaron Broussard has moved his law office out of the Super 8 Motel on Clearview to a place on Williams Boulevard in Kenner. The suit looks like an old-time shakedown to me folks but we’ll be keeping our eye on it as it winds it way through the 24th JDC. Click the pic below the fold to get the 9 page pdf. ~ sop Read the rest of this entry »