Reynolds ordered to pay 2010 settlement
State Rep. Ron Reynolds has been ordered to pay $504,000 in damages for failing to give a grieving mother her share of settlement money from a 2010 lawsuit.
The embattled lawmaker, who is also an attorney, failed to give his former client, Nancy Ann Calloway, her share of a $250,000 settlement from a lawsuit stemming from her 23-yearold daughter’s death in a car crash, a Harris County judge ruled Friday.
After the award was handed down, the 55-yearold flight attendant teared up as she described Reynolds repeatedly putting her off when she asked for money that she had earmarked for a tombstone for her daughter, April Cherisse.
“It’s more pain in a painful situation,” Calloway said. “It’s a tragedy.”
Reynolds, a Missouri City Democrat who is facing a runoff election next month, has a history of dubious business practices.
He was convicted last year of illegally soliciting five different clients in Montgomery County, and the state is considering whether to suspend his law license. Lawyers are generally prohibited from contacting prospective clients to ask for business, a misdemeanor called barratry. He is appealing those convictions and fighting the state’s efforts.
Reynolds did not respond to Calloway’s lawsuit and did not appear in court Friday. Calls to his law practice and his statehouse office seeking comment were not returned.
State District Judge Grant Dorfman agreed with Calloway that the lawyer owed her $168,000 in actual damages and $336,000 in punitive damages.
‘Cruel’ practices
Reynolds had given Calloway about $82,000 — about half of what he owed her — about 18 months after he received the settlement check, according to testimony.
On Friday, the judge agreed that Reynolds should forfeit his share of the mediated settlement because of his misdeeds.
After he ruled, the judge told Calloway that he had seen other consumers wronged by unethical business practices, but said Calloway’s circumstances were “crueler” than most.
“It’s especially troubling that it is a member of the state bar, much less a state rep,” the judge said.
It was in his capacity as a state representative that Reynolds approached Calloway, she testified Friday. He came to her home to console her two days after her daughter’s death in his role as her local legislator, she said. He then offered to represent her in a lawsuit.
Calloway’s attorney, Jim Culpepper, said authorities may also look at the case as another charge of barratry or in a grievance to the state bar, the agency that licenses attorneys and has the power to disbar them. Culpepper said he has not pursued those kinds of actions because he did not want to be accused of seeking criminal charges to leverage his position in the lawsuit.
The lawyer, who has sued Reynolds in the past for defrauding a client, did not mince words about the legislator.
“He’s a coward,” Culpepper said. “He is a coward who takes advantage of mothers who have lost a child.”
In a separate hearing Friday in Austin, the state Board of Disciplinary Appeals took under advisement a request by Reynolds not to suspend him from practicing law while his five convictions for barratry in Montgomery County are on appeal. The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel had filed to have him suspended because of the convictions.
Runoff pending
In a response filed Thursday, Reynolds’ attorney, Jeffrey Wagnon of Bryan, said no action was taken against six other attorneys who were arrested at the same time as Reynolds, and argued that Reynolds will likely get the charges dismissed on appeal because he was convicted “on emotion rather than facts” because evidence of a barratry scheme was lacking.
“Every single state witness admitted that there was no written or testimonial evidence that proved that Respondent had knowledge that Robert Valdez, the ringleader of the barratry scheme, was illegally soliciting clients,” the filing by Reynolds’ attorney states.
No date has been set for a decision in the case.
The hearing in Houston was attended by political observers who are backing Angelique Bartholomew, the challenger in next month’s runoff for the Democratic nomination for House District 27.
Four Democratic candidates competed to represent the district, which extends across eastern Fort Bend County and takes in most of Missouri City and parts of Houston and Sugar Land. Reynolds led in the March 1 primary but came up 250 votes short of the amount needed to avoid a runoff May 24.
Despite his legal trouble, Reynolds has remained popular among Fort Bend Democrats. He is the first African-American elected to the state House from that county and serves as the House Democratic Whip.
The Democratic winner will face Republican nominee Ken Bryant, a lawyer, in November’s general election.