Louisiana Voice

Former British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-1898) is generally credited with coining the phrase, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Anyone who has had the misfortune of navigating our legal system in a civil lawsuit is keenly aware of the relevance of Gladstone’s insightful observation, especially if an individual should find himself pitted against the unlimited financial and manpower resources of, say, state government.

No one knows that better than three individuals who have seen their cases languish for as long as eight years with no resolution in sight. Murphy Painter, Corey DelaHoussaye and Billy Broussard have found the state attempting to ground them into submission through a flurry of legal motions.

The state has taken a page out of the playbooks of Allstate and State Farm in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Delay, deny, defend. Like those billion-dollar insurance companies, the state can afford to drag a case out indefinitely in the hopes of either demoralizing or bankrupting a plaintiff.

For those who insist that every person is entitled to his day in court, there is an equally compelling argument that justice can be bought. In criminal matters, the wealthy defendant who steals millions from his company or the politician who runs off a bridge, killing his female passenger, has a far better chance of avoiding a lengthy jail sentence—or any at all—than, say, some down on his luck individual who has the misfortune to getting caught with a joint. That’s because he can’t afford the legal representation and extracted courtroom fight as can those with greater resources.

LouisianaVoice will examine the legal pitfalls encountered by each of the three persons mentioned above in separate stories beginning today in an effort to show how the state drags out these cases as a tactic to wear down their finances and their will to keep fighting.

In the case of Murphy Painter, Bobby Jindal tried to set him up on bogus charges way back in August 2010 when he wouldn’t bend to the wishes of the late Tom Benson, a major contributor to Jindal’s political campaign, over a licensing issue. In our initial 2013 story about the prosecution, LouisianaVoice was the only media outlet to say publicly—and correctly—that Painter was being SET UP by Jindal.

Subsequent to that, we learned that the WARRANT executed on Painter’s ABC office was illegal in that the raid was carried out three days before the warrant was signed by Judge Bonnie Parker.

But that didn’t stop Jindal from pursuing criminal charges against Painter. He was indicted on 42 separate counts of computer fraud. But despite Jindal’s marshaling all the resources of state government against Painter, he was acquitted and the state had to pay his legal fees of $474,000—and that didn’t even take into account how much the state spent on his prosecution.

We will return to the state’s legal fees momentarily.

But first, let’s move to August 2011. That’s when Painter filed a lawsuit against the state, the Department of Revenue and Taxation, former Secretary of Revenue and Taxation Cynthia Bridges and Inspector General Stephen Street

It’s been eight years now and Painter’s lawsuit is no closer to a trial than it was in 2011.

Attorneys for the state have responded with stalling tactics that have taxed the patience of presiding judge who, out of exasperation, complained that Painter’s lawsuit had become so clouded by the state’s defensive maneuvers, motions, denials, and delays that the case had become impossible for any legal scholar to follow.

Just like the state planned it.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Lost in all this is the issue of just how much of taxpayers’ money the state is willing to spend in order to break an adversary who was railroaded for political purposes in the first place.

After all, if his lawsuit had no merit, it would seem the state would be eager to go trial and get the matter settled once and for all. That alone would save untold thousands of dollars. But all too often, defense attorneys with political connections are given contracts to defend these lawsuits. It’s a lucrative arrangement: the attorneys contribute generously to political campaigns and they are rewarded with contracts to sit on a case for a few years—all while the meter is running, of course.

Efforts have been made to learned just how much the state has spent in defending Painter’s lawsuit but the state says that information is protected under the public information statute.

For that matter, we have even been unable to learn how much the state spent in legal fees in its criminal prosecution against Painter. We know his legal fees of near half-a-million dollars were awarded but the state had shielded from view the amount it spent in the criminal prosecution on the grounds the ongoing civil suit prohibit the release of that information.

In fact, there is a provision tucked away in the statute [R.S. 44:4 (15)] which exempts divulging current legal fees in litigation to anyone except the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget and that committee litigation subcommittee.

So, basically, the taxpayers who ultimately foot the bill for defending otherwise indefensible litigation are kept in the dark by state statute from learning how their tax dollars are wasted on years of costly legal maneuvers designed to frustrate and short circuit a system supposedly designed to allow the average citizen to seek redress for wrongs committed against them.

The exemption shielding this information notwithstanding, the citizens of Louisiana should have a right to know when the state deliberately draws out litigation in which it is a defendant with definite exposure—all as a ploy to exhaust the plaintiff physically, mentally and financially. A key element in the equation is the right to know how much taxpayer money is being lavished on contract attorneys who happen to have the right political connections,

A New York Appellate Court judge wrote in a 1968 case, “Public opinion, which is the most effective check on official abuse, can never be aroused (if) any and all acts of such an official are protected either by a veil of secrecy or the critic is subjected to costly litigation.”

William Gladstone would probably agree.