In Legal Slide, Pat Mannix Finds A Foothold

BRISTOL, Va. – What do you do when you’ve sued and lost, tried to dislodge the judge and failed, been slapped with a financial penalty you believe is excessive and been denied access to the billing records?

If you’re Pat Mannix, you keep on suing. And lately, the unorthodox legal strategy of the litigious Bristolian has gained some traction with one judge.

Mannix’s current legal crusade has evolved with so many twists that it is almost unrecognizable from the original case he brought in 2007: a claim against a radio talk show host he alleged discriminated against him by refusing to take his calls.

Mannix won a judgment when the host, Marc Bernier, failed to respond – only to have it reversed on appeal by a 28th Circuit Court judge who assessed Mannix a nearly $10,000 fee for abusing the judicial process.

That sanction was based on the expenses claimed by Bernier’s law firm, Bristol, Va.-based Elliott Lawson & Minor, which sought reimbursement for the two months work they spent on the case. Mannix, arguing that the law firm could not have spent enough hours on the case during that period to generate such a fee, filed a motion seeking the firm’s billing records.

The judge, Isaac St. Clair Freeman, sided with the law firm, which claimed that such information would breach the attorney-client privilege, and denied Mannix’s motion.

So Mannix sued the bookkeeper, Susan Doss, for $15,000 in Bristol General District Court, alleging she submitted a fraudulent affidavit detailing the firm’s expenses. In the new case, he filed the same motion seeking billing records, and this time, a different judge granted it.

“Based upon the relatively short period of time that was involved, the attorney’s fees were disproportionate to the work performed,” wrote General District Court Judge Sage B. Johnson in a May 14 opinion.

Without having seen the itemized bill, Johnson wrote, “a reasonable person could infer from the facts alleged” that the fees did not match the work involved. The judge ordered the firm to submit the billing records under seal, which only he will be able to review.

Mannix, who believes he is entitled outright to the billing records, went along with this option, he said, out of a desire to get the information entered into the court record.

“This is how it should have been handled in the first place,” Mannix said Monday, calling Johnson’s ruling a repudiation of how Freeman handled the case. “This is the difference between an honest judge and a dishonest judge,” Mannix said.

Jim Elliott, principal of Elliott Lawson & Minor, declined to discuss a pending court matter.

Mannix, who twice sought to disqualify Freeman from his case, has been unsparing in his criticism of the Circuit Court judge, calling him unfit for the bench and “dangerous.”

Freeman, for his part, noted Mannix’s lengthy, decades-old civil paper trail and issued an opinion that Mannix should be barred from filing any legal action in Bristol, Washington and Smyth counties without obtaining judicial permission. That ruling was substantially narrowed in the order prepared by Bernier’s attorneys, which restricted Mannix only from filing legal actions against their client.

Mannix, however, traces the current round of litigation to Freeman, who raised the issue of sanctions in a September 2007 court hearing. At that date, less than two months into Bernier’s appeal of Mannix’s judgment, Freeman asked Bernier’s attorney if he would be seeking sanctions before the attorney announced his intention to do so.

Judges in Virginia can impose sanctions on their own motion when they determine that a party has brought a case that is not fact-based or is designed to harass another.

But simply by raising the issue, Mannix said, Bernier’s law firm “got a signal from [Freeman] that they got a blank check, and they filled it out for $10,000.”
Mannix and his attorney appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, which took no action and handed the case back to Freeman. Bernier’s attorneys have applied for additional fees they incurred in the high court appeal. That application has kept the case active, and Mannix vows he will appeal it again.

“When Freeman brought up the motion for sanctions, he opened a Pandora’s box, and this is what’s come of it,” Mannix said.

Mannix v. Doss is set for trial on July 30.

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