Lawyer accused of lying to judge

Nelson counsel seeks contempt for Game & Fish’s top litigator

— Sheffield Nelson’s legal battle against the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has opened a new front, with his attorneys accusing the agency’s top lawyer of lying to a circuit judge and submitting misleading records to the court last year in a lawsuit over turkey hunting.

They want attorney Jim Goodhart and a former paralegal held in contempt at a Feb. 25 court hearing.

Goodhart denounced the accusations as part of an ongoing vendetta against the agency by Nelson, a former commission chairman, promising that they will be refuted.

“There were no false statements or misrepresentations made to the court,” he said by e-mail on Monday. “These latest allegations are simply one more attempt by Sheffield Nelson ... to embarrass the Game and Fish Commission and its employees.”

The former Republican gubernatorial candidate has been locked in litigation with the commission since September when he sued the agency, arguing that it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the Administrative Procedures Act or the Freedom of Information Act. Nelson is challenging the commission’s new management structure, maintaining that it was enacted without required public notice.

The allegation that Goodhart deceived the judge stems from an October 2009 lawsuit challenging the commission’s decision to cancel the fall 2009 turkey-hunting season. The lawsuit was dismissed in April, with the judge ruling that the commission acted within its authority, leaving the court no jurisdiction to overturn the commission’s decision - a ruling currently under appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court.

On Friday, David Carruth, the attorney who brought that suit on behalf of Nelson’s grandson, David Clark, filed a petition for contempt against Goodhart, claiming the agency lawyer had lied to the judge about whether the agency followed the proper procedures to notify the public that the season was being canceled.

Wendy Higgins, the former paralegal, should also be held in contempt, Carruth claims in his petition, because she provided a falsified affidavit, representing that the proper procedures were followed. The pair maintained that the commission had sent notice of the proposed change to the secretary of state’s office, but Carruth, using the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, could find no proof that the notice was received, according to the filing.

Goodhart’s statements should be considered particularly egregious, Carruth argues, because the judge relied on them, backed by Higgins’ affidavit, in making his ruling in throwing out the lawsuit, with a finding that the commission had made all of the required public notifications as required by the Arkansas Administrative Procedures Act before canceling the season a week before it was scheduled to begin. Even if Goodhart had only misspoken, he had three months - the time it took to draft the judge’s order - to correct the mistake, Carruth states.

“Had Mr. Goodhart not made the false statements, the truthful facts would have been established that the commission failed to provide proper notice and the court would have been bound by law to grant the ... [ruling] requested by the plaintiff,” Carruth’s petition states. “Instead, Mr. Goodhart gave false information and his actions mislead the court, resulted in a gross miscarriage of justice .... [and] was done with willful and wanton disregard for his obligations as an attorney and as chief counsel for a major state agency.”

Carruth filed the petition for contempt on Friday with Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, the successor of Judge Earnest Sanders who made the original turkey season ruling. Contempt carries the possibility of jail time.Carruth is asking the judge to force Goodhart and Higgins to pay the related legal fees and costs.

Goodhart and Nelson have already crossed swords in the ongoing lawsuit. Nelson attempted to have Goodhart and two other staff attorneys disqualified from representing the commission by arguing that Goodhart was likely to become a witness in the case. The agency briefly considered contesting the effort, but relented once Nelson’s lawyers formally named Goodhart and the staff attorneys as witnesses, which forced them to withdraw from representing the commission, court filings show.

Arkansas, Pages 8 on 02/01/2011

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