‘I was hurt’

Attorney files suit against man who accused him of fraud

TOP ATTORNEY Patrick Bailey has revealed that he was hurt by the actions of the elderly St Catherine man who accused him of fraud.

Less than a month after he was acquitted of fraud charges, Bailey has filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against his accuser, realestate agent Stafford Dixon, seeking millions of dollars in damages.

“I was very hurt over his (Dixon) conduct, considering how I have assisted him in the past,” Bailey told The Gleaner yesterday.

The lawsuit also named Superintendent Anthony McLaughlin, then head of the Police Fraud Squad, and Channa Ormsby, the former clerk of court who prosecuted Bailey, and the Government as defendants.

2015 CHARGES

Bailey was arrested and charged in March 2015 for conspiracy to defraud and forgery eight years after Dixon first complained to detectives at the Fraud Squad that he had hired the well-known attorney to handle a land transaction and joint venture housing development. However, according to the allegations, the project failed, and Bailey forged a transfer certificate, which caused Dixon to lose his 22-acre property and have to pay his prospective business partners more than $28 million.

At the start of the trial in April last year, the charge of forgery was dismissed, and last month, at the close of the prosecution’s case, senior Parish Judge Tara Reid Carr ruled that there was no case for Bailey to answer.

Bailey declined to go into detail about his lawsuit but took issue with the way his case was handled by the clerk of court. “As a minister of justice, she has certain obligations to the court, which she must know and respect,” he said, without elaborating.

In the lawsuit, the prominent attorney alleged that Dixon made a false complaint to the police. He also claimed that investigators laid charges against him despite a report from a document examiner that disputed Dixon’s assertion.