Louisiana Voice

The wheels of justice always turn slowly but in the case of Mangham contractor Jeff Mercer, it’s pretty obvious that “justice” has become stuck in a rut and there’s no apparent hurry to call a tow truck.

In other words, there appears to be a concerted effort to delay justice and to simply out-wait Mercer in his pursuit of money that is legitimately owed him. After all, he has to die someday and the State of Louisiana will have won its 30 pieces of silver.

To say there seems to be some major collusion at play here would be to overstate the obvious.

Collusion between whom, you ask?

To answer that, just ask yourself who has the most to lose in this ongoing drama.

That would be the State of Louisiana, through the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD), which was hit with a $20 million judgment in December 2015. And Mercer is no nearer receiving his money today than he was when the judgment was handed down six years ago.

Every time state district court Judge Wilson Rambo rules in Mercer’s favor, the Louisiana Supreme Court reverses. The plain, simple truth of the matter is the state has no intention of ever paying the judgment.

How do I know this? Because for 20 years, I worked as a claims adjuster for the Louisiana Office of Risk Management (ORM), the insurance agency for claims against various state agencies.

And while the claim that I “worked” might well come under a valid challenge, considering my less-than-stellar, yet accurate, performance evaluations, there is one important bit of information I picked up along the way.

You see, one of the very first cases I inherited upon embarking on my 20 years at ORM in January 1991 was a class-action suit against the state by victims of the 1983 flood that destroyed a number of residences and businesses in Tangipahoa Parish.

The suit was filed by Jean Boudreaux on the premise that the construction of I-12 through the parish acted as a dam that backed water up onto occupants on the north side of the interstate.

The case of BOUDREAUX v STATE of TRANSPORTATION and DEVELOPMENT is coming up on 40 years of residing in legal purgatory with no resolution in sight.

DOTD was hit with a $91.8 MILLION judgment in 2006. With judicial interest, that award has swollen to more than $300 million.

But before my 2011 retirement, it was brought to my attention by those a little further up the food chain than I that the state had no intention of ever paying the judgment.

And that 2016 flood? Plaintiffs were told by the Louisiana Supreme Court that they waited too late to file their claim even as Boudreaux has been waiting nearly four decades for justice.

So, there you have it, Mr. Mercer. You are left twisting in the wind while the courts play legal chess, denying a single motion at a time rather than taking all the motions as a group and issuing a single ruling. By doing it the way they are, they can stretch things out indefinitely – and that’s precisely what they’re doing.

Funny thing is, Mercer recently recorded a conversation with the general counsel for Second Circuit Court of Appeal who confided in him that former appellate court judge Henry N. Brown, who wrote the opinion overturning the $20 million award to Mercer told her, “Yeah, I woulda challenged it, too.”

She was referring to Mercer’s allegation that Brown, whose father had worked for DOTD for 44 years, should have recused himself from the matter because of a conflict of interest.

It wasn’t Brown’s only brush with a CONFLICT of INTEREST. Another one actually cost him his position on the court as he was forced into retirement after it was revealed he had created a hostile environment toward colleagues who were hearing the appeal of a civil lawsuit against one of his friends from whom Brown had purchased a home.

Mercer is no fool, but he has a point to prove. He was extorted as a contractor for DOTD and DOTD refused to pay him for his work. He has already had to sell off all his equipment and his future as a contractor is worse than bleak.

But the bottom line is he is an honest man who tried to give the state an honest day’s work. The least the state could have done was reciprocate. Instead, DOTD allowed its employees to rip Mercer off and then refuse to pay him more than $9 million for work performed.

And now, it’s more than obvious that the state has no intention of ever paying him for the work or for the $20 million judgment awarded unanimously by a 12-member jury of his peers.

It kinda makes you wonder if there is mischief afoot.