Beclowning judges & fraudulent misrepresentations: Doug Handshoe's favorite topic. A commentary on "intrinsic" versus "extrinsic" in cases of fraud on the court

Consistency and candor with the court can make or break any case, but American judges who encounter "a deliberately planned and carefully executed scheme" to influence the court through machinations done outside the court's process is seen as among the most reprehensible conduct, which strikes at the very heart of the institution of justice.  A misrepresentation made within a proceeding, such as perjury, is called "intrinsic" while the latter kind of scheme is known as "extrinsic."

In June of 2013, homophobic blogger Douglas Handshoe was the Respondent in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Trout Point Lodge, Vaughn Perret, and Charles Leary in Nova Scotia Supeme Court. According to the U.S. Federal District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, Handshoe was since 2011 on a "campaign" to harass, damage, and embarass, Trout Point, Leary & Perret online. This included publishing their copyrighted photographs without permission.

Unlike the previous lawsuit launched against Handshoe by the Trout Point plaintiffs, in this 2013 case Handshoe appeared and defended in Nova Scotia. He was, he stated on his blog, going to show the Nova Scotia judges how they had previously been "beclowned" by Leary & Perret, whom the Slabbed blog had targetted with a plethora of homophobic epithets including "queer fag scum."

In his "Reply to Applicants' Motion to Strike & Summary Disposal," signed by him and filed with the Nova Scotia Court on June 24, Handshoe made the following statement:

Remember that statement regarding an alleged link betwen Handshoe "and the Attorneys for Concrete Busters." That is that "any allegation of a connection is both fanciful and concocted from whole cloth." It is important because in April, 2013, Judge Louis Guirola filed in the court record a letter from Louisiana attorney Daniel Abel stating his belief that Handshoe and his attorney Bobby Truitt had confected a scheme to place false criminal allegations in an amended lawsuit by two waste disposal companies against Frederick Heebe and the River Birch Landfill. In particular, that lawsuit named Trout Point Lodge and another of Abel, Leary, and Perret's businesses, Cerro Coyote, S.A., as "shell companies" involved in a criminal RICO conspiracy with former politican Aaron Broussard. At that point, a waste disposal contract given to River Birch by Broussard's administrtion was under federal criminal investigation. The investigation of River Birch later collapsed.

When the Court filed that letter into the record in April, 2013, Handshoe and attorney Truitt remained silent: no response.

Trout Point, Perret, & Leary then succesfully moved the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal to expand the record of evidence on appeal to include Abel's letter and a letter from "Attorneys for Concrete Busters," specifically Smith & Fawer, LLC. The public record indicates the motion was opposed by Doug Handshoe and Bobby Truitt, but then when it came time to actually respond to the Plaintiffs' motion, Truitt filed nothing in response. Again, silence. A failure to disclose? Fearful of having to make positive assertions that were lies?

Smith & Fawer, for their part, ultimately retracted their accusations, dismissed the allegations in court, and said that they gleaned what was said about Trout Point Lodge and Cerro Coyote from "slabbed.com." The true URL for Slabbed is slabbed.org. There was no mention of actual contact with Handshoe in the Smith & Fawer letter, signed by attorney Stephen Gele.

Daniel Abel wrote his letter to Judge Guirola because in his decision denying Trout Point, Perret, & Leary's enforcement of their 2012 $427,000 Canadian judgment against Handshoe, Judge Guirola referred to the allegations made in that waste disposal lawsuit despite the fact that it was never introduced into evidence. In legal parlance, he took "judicial notice" of not just the existence of the lawsuit, but also of the allegations contained therein. Judge Guirola also stated in the decision that he had looked at the Slabbed blog in October, 2012, that is, after the two sides had finished their submissions to the court. The record shows that in September, Trout Point, Leary, and Perret also filed an "emergency motion" asking the court to tell Handshoe to not publish about the plaintiffs while the court was deliberating. Judge Guirola took no action, other than to look at Slabbed.

His decision to deny Trout Point's effort to enforce its judgment, available on PACER, stated that in:

So, if Doug Handshoe and Bobby Truitt had nothing to do with placing those criminal allegations about Trout Point, Perret, and Leary in the lawsuit drafted by Smith & Fawer, then the judge's judicial notice might be unusual, but not devestating. Other than attorney Abel's suspicions, articulated in his letter to Judge Guirola, there was no other evidence that Handshoe and/or Truitt had contact with Smith & Fawer. In fact, as seen above, Handshoe denied any such contact in no uncertain terms, and in a court of law.

Then, last October, after winning their copyright infringement action against Handshoe in Nova Scotia, Trout Point, Perret, & Leary were trying to once again enforce a Canadian judgment in Mississippi.

Handshoe improperly removed the enforcement action to Judge Guirola's district court. It was remanded last November.

While that remand decision was pending, Handshoe filed a motion trying to convince Judge Guirola in Mississippi to enjoin Judge Piper Griffin in New Orleans from continuing with Mr. Abel's defamation lawsuit against Handshoe, Truitt, and Anne-Marie Vandenweghe in New Orleans Civil District Court. That was a crazy move, which Judge Guirola never entertained.

Nevertheless, Handshoe filed his own sworn affidavit along with his motion.You can see it on PACER.

Here is part of what he swore to in that affidavit filed with the federal district court:

Guess "both fanciful and concocted from whole cloth" was a bit of an eaggeration, no? Looks like an outright lie to the court. In addition, Handshoe & Truitt's silence before Judge Guirola and the 5th Circuit looks more and more like intentional non-disclosure. 

Beside the sudden admission in October, 2014, to what he had flatly denied to a court in June, 2013--that is to direct contact with "Attorneys for Concrete Busters"--Doug Handshoe made other statements of interest.

First, to anyone looking at the amended lawsuit by Concrete Busters, filed by Smith & Fawer, it was not "Steve Gele" that "drafted signed and filed" the complaint, it was Randall Smith. Knowing which attorney actually drafted the lawsuit would show some insider knowledge by Handshoe of how it was drafted before it was filed. How does Handshoe know he likes to be called "Steve" anyway?

Second, Handshoe says he "read the lawsuit online" but also that Mr. Gele "leaked" it to him. Which is it? He saw it online, or it was leaked to him? Maybe Mr. Handshoe needs to prepare his affidavits more carefully, checking for factual consistency? In addition, looking at the metadata of the PDF file published by Handshoe alongside other PDF's created by Smith & Fawer shows that the PDF file published by Slabbed most likely came directly from Smith & Fawer. So did the PDF of the lawsuit published on nola.com. Third, Handshoe published the lawsuit online before the Times-Picayune did, not after. So, who gave the Times-Picayune the lawsuit? Handshoe?

Were Mr. Abel's statements to Judge Guirola that there had been "fraud upon the court"--that is "a deliberately planned and carefully executed scheme" to influence the court -- in the Trout Point Lodge v. Handshoe case correct? There are certainly lots of questions to ask Mr. Handshoe and Mr. Truitt, now that both will face discovery in New Orleans Civil District Court.

Handshoe practically admitted this was what was happening on October 5, 2012, when Handshoe published a lengthy post on the Concrete Busters allegations entitled “Civil District Court lawsuit filed by Concrete Busters against River Birch terms Trout Point Lodge Ltd. of Nova Scotia a 'shell company'.” He published: “I have an outstanding  matter in United States Federal District Court in Gulfport before Judge Louis Guirola that my lawyer, Bobby Truitt has me barred from commenting upon. But that does not mean that we can’t let Concrete Busters tell part of that story . . ."

Academic question: does this behavior rise to the level of criminality?

Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal decides against Handshoe to expand the record: Another defeat for the fabled Slabbed legal team

Perusing the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system turned up that on May 31, 2013, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, now considering a case of first impression under the federal SPEECH Act in enforcing a $427,000 Canadian defamation judgment against Douglas Handshoe, has granted the Plaintiffs' motion to expand the record on appeal, a remarkable move.

 

The significance of this Order lies in the fact that the new materials now allowed into the evidentiary record on appeal include a total retraction of false allegations appearing in the Concrete Busters lawsuit against River Birch Landfill (now dismissed in its entirety, with prejudice) that Trout Point Lodge was a shell company used in criminal racketeering. Those allegations were dismissed voluntarily, and the Smith & Fawer law firm representing Concrete Busters plaintiffs identified Douglas Handshoe's Slabbed blog as their sole source. The lower court referenced that Concrete Busters lawsuit in its decision, but the dismissal came well after it made its SPEECH Act decision in favor of Handshoe.

Also now in the record is a document filed in the district court by Chief Judge Louis Guirola that makes allegations of possible fraud against Handshoe and his lawyer Bobby Truitt. The lawyer for Trout Point Lodge, Vaughn Perret, and Charles Leary told the 5th Circuit that he can't vouch for or deny those allegations made by attorney Daniel Abel, but the May 31 Order makes it clear that the Court of Appeal will now take up evidence that could be very damaging to Handshoe's case.  

That information about IP addresses is relevant because it would mean that Handshoe knew the district court was looking at Slabbed while deliberating on his $427,000 fate. If intentional acts were done to influence the court, including inserting allegations into the Concrete Busters suit, there could be consequences well beyond loosing the appeal in the Fifth Circuit. If the case is returned to Judge Guirola, it's an open question as to what he would do about the fraud allegation.

Finally, as the Order states, Jack "Bobby" Truitt, Handshoe's lawyer, never filed a response to the motion, even though the Court of Appeal set a deadline for doing so. That's one famed legal team, for sure. Bon sang!

It makes one wonder if Mr. Doug has any legal team left after his disastrous showing in Judge Susie Morgan's courtroom, his loss on attorney's fees & an appeal bond, and now this decision . . . 

Attorneys for Concrete Busters amend lawsuit, dismiss allegations against Trout Point Lodge, others

Yesterday, the Smith & Fawer law firm amended its complaint on behalf of Concrete Busters of Louisiana and Waste Remediation of Plaquemines against Frederick Heebe, River Birch Landfill, and others, according to the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system of the federal courts. This follows a bizarre move a couple of weeks ago when the law firm sent out a letter retracting allegations of involvement in criminal racketeering they had made against Trout Point Lodge and Cerro Coyote, stating that their information had come from Doug Handshoe's blog Slabbed, and was actually not true. Trout Point and Cerro Coyote--which operate small hotels and vacation properties--are owned by longtime business partners Daniel Abel, Charles Leary, and Vaughn Perret, who during the 1990s owned Chicory Farm and the Chicory Farm Cafe in Louisiana.

 

This can't be good news for homophobic blogger Handshoe, who is being sued by attorney Abel for defamation, including over allegations of involvement in organized crime first made by Handshoe and then repeated in the Concrete Busters lawsuit. Handshoe was also found liable for $427,000 in defamation damages and costs by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in February of 2012. Enforcement of that judgment in favor of Trout Point, Leary, and Perret is currently before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans.

Trout Point and its chef/proprietors lost a summary judgment proceeding against Handshoe in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi last December. The about-face by Smith & Fawer and its clients is significant because in that decision, the federal court took judicial notice of the Concrete Busters lawsuit's allegations. The court also stated that former Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard was a defendant in that Concrete Busters complaint, which was in fact not true, and that Mr. Abel was Broussard's law partner, which Abel has also sworn in an affidavit was never the case. No court filings in that case made such an allegation, which has only appeared on Slabbed itself.

Strangely, a look at PACER revealed the clerk for the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana--where the Concrete Busters complaint is filed--erroneously listed Aaron Broussard, Trout Point Lodge, and Cerro Coyote as defendants in that lawsuit. The error was later corrected, but only after the Mississippi court had made its decision in favor of Handshoe, citing the fact that Broussard was a defendant in a lawsuit also involving Trout Point and Cerro Coyote.

This action against Handshoe was the first disputed case in which a U.S. court applied the federal Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act. Handshoe and blogger Anne-Marie Vandenweghe continued to blog about Abel, Perret, Leary, Trout Point, and Cerro Coyote while the court was making its decision, ramping up publishing about them, seemingly in an attempt to convince the court of the truth of their criminal accusations (which if false would be per se defamatory and actionable in Mississippi). The court's decision states that the court monitored Slabbed, taking note of the large number of posts referring to Trout Point, Perret, and Leary in 2012 alone. The fact that the court relied on the now-retracted Concrete Busters allegations as well as other questionable facts could be significant to the appeal. This is because the court was operating under Mississippi law's requirement that a plaintiff prove falsity in a defamation case, something at times very difficult to do. Abel, Leary, and Perret have always insisted they had nothing to do with the criminal activity alleged over and over by Handshoe. Both the Times-Picayune and Fox 8 WVUE have long ago retracted any erroneous identification of Trout Point Lodge belonging to Aaron Broussard. 

Handshoe says that the retractions were coerced from media as part of a conspiracy and coverup. The Concrete Busters lawsuit, in turn, said Trout Point and Cerro Coyote were "shell companies" used by Broussard and Heebe in a criminal conspiracy, and that Leary and Perret were working to silence a valid investigation through their suits against Handshoe and others, including WVUE. Those accusations have now been officially dismissed in addition to the earlier Smith & Fawer retraction.

In another remarkable twist, Abel wrote a letter to the same Mississippi federal court, attaching as an exhibit the letter from Smith & Fawer. The Mississippi federal judge chose to file Abel's letter and exhibit into the public record available on PACER. The Abel letter refers the court's attention to possible fraud by Team Handshoe. Abel's claim is based on the fact that Handshoe likely knew the Mississippi court was perusing Slabbed while deliberating. Handshoe has not denied the allegations.

 

 

Indeed, not everything went Handshoe's way. The federal court flatly denied Handshoe's motion for attorney's fees and an appeal bond, stating that there was no suggestion the appeal of its own decision by Trout Point Lodge, Leary, and Perret to the 5th Circuit was frivolous. This was despite the fact that the SPEECH Act allowed for Handshoe to recover reasonable attorney's fees. Handshoe attorney Bobby Truitt (who also represents Anne-Marie Vandenweghe) was asking for an extraordinary $60,000 in fees on the summary judgment motions. In its initial decision the federal court also agreed that Handshoe was on a "campaign to damage" Leary, Perret, and their business. 

Abel's lawsuit alleges that Handshoe and former Assistant Parish Attorney Vandenweghe conducted their multi-year campaign of defamation in an effort to sway public opinion in the New Orleans/Jefferson metro area at the same time as the federal criminal probe of Broussard, Heebe, and others was underway. This would have benefitted Vandenweghe's own whistleblower lawsuit as well as the criminal prosecutions. He says that Vandenweghe used multiple online personalities, engaging in sock puppetry on Slabbed and elsewhere. Abel has also pointed to an instance where former Assistant U.S. Attorney Salvadore Perricone (posting anonymously) cast doubt on the Times-Picayune's retraction regarding Trout Point Lodge. Perricone had also speculated that Vandenweghe was indeed Slabbed's alter-ego in the context of an article about Vandenweghe's lawsuit against Jefferson Parish, which remarkably just settled out of court this past week before there had been any deposition of Vandenweghe. Abel also claims someone from the New Orleans U.S. Attorney's Office called Trout Point Lodge and then hung up the phone just as Leary & Perret were first seeking to enforce their $427,000 judgment against Handshoe in the Mississippi court about a year ago.

Abel is currently fighting separate motions to dismiss his lawsuit made by Handshoe and Vandenweghe. Vandenweghe went to law school with both former U.S. Attorney James Letten and his top prosecutor former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Maselli-Mann. Both left the Department of Justice after a blogging scandal involving Heebe unmasking Perricone and Maselli-Mann as anonymous online commenters. Perricone had resigend his post a few months earlier. Abel's brief responding to Vandenweghe's motion unmasks some of her multiple online personae using literary and grammatical analysis, similar to the technique used by Heebe to shed light on Perricone and Maselli-Mann's online activities. Abel says he has an M.A. in English literature.

The suggestion is that Vandenweghe's used her position as Assistant Parish Attorney in charge of Public Record Requests, as well as her contacts, to resolve personal vendettas and gain a lawsuit victory, seriously injuring Abel and his partners as innocent bystanders in the proces.

As previously reported, Smith & Fawer client Waste Remediation of Plaquemines is owned by Hank Lauricella, who was a Louisiana state senator at the same time Vandenweghe was on Jefferson Parish Council. Both represented Harahan, the home of both Vandenweghe and Perricone. Smith & Fawer's predecessor law firm also represented Handshoe's business partner Fred H. Goodson in his criminal trial, in which he was convicted for racketeering, fraud, bribery, and money laundering involving truck stop gambling. Lauricella did not seek re-election after his name came up in the same federal criminal probe of video poker in Louisiana, termed "Operation Hardcrust." Handshoe was corporate secretary for Goodson's company Slidell Motel, Inc., a segment of the O'Aces Casino operation ordered forfeit as part of the criminal conspiracy by the federal court after Goodson's conviction. Checks from Slidell Motel were used to make contributions to Louisiana government officials, according to FBI wiretaps.