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Maria Brown has filed a second motion to amend her complaint. In this amendment, she is seeking to add as defendants the lawyers representing the defendants, Chris Shapley and his law firm, Brunnini, Grantham and Hughes. The complaint alleges two claims: Slander, in that Shapley told a tv reporter that “the paralegal was discharged for inappropriate conduct on the job.” The complaint alleges this statement is false and that Brown “was given severance pay and her subsequent request for unemployment compensation was not challenged by Defendants for any supposed termination for cause.”

The complaint then alleges that, before Maria Brown’s deposition in the case Renfroe & Co. v. Rigsby, defense counsel “sent a threatening letter directly to Plaintiff regarding the upcoming deposition, which is a violation of Rule 4.2 of the Mississippi Rules of Professional Conduct, as Plaintiff was represented by counsel, which fact is even stated in the bottom paragraph of page 2 of the letter.” The rule cited is a rule against lawyers directly contacting clients of another lawyer without that lawyer’s consent.

This is not going to reduce the temper-levels in that suit.

The complaint also has allegations that may have been in the first amended complaint– that right after Brown filed suit in December, the Nutt firm attempted to comply with the Renfroe injunction by sending on the electronic copies of documents it had been holding, and that it was still going to keep documents relating to the qui tam case against State Farm. Judge Acker responded with a letter that the qui tam documents were clearly within his injunction, too.

Here’s Brown’s 2nd amended complaint and here’s the exhibits to Brown’s 2nd amended complaint.

Update:

The exhibits to the proposed 2nd amended complaint include an email from August 28th from Bill Jones at David Nutt & Associates stating that she was “laid off due to a reorganization which eliminated her position” (Exhibit E) and a December 20th story at WLBT in Jackson that “The paralegal was discharged for inappropriate conduct on the job.” Apparently, the disagreements within the Nutt camp aren’t limited to the exact nature of David Nutt’s role there. There’s also a bit of a contradiction between the position taken by the SKG’s group Alabama lawyer (that, because of the “indictment currently pending in the Northern District of Mississippi, nothing is being deleted at this time.” Exhibit F) and the position taken by Nutt’s lawyer (Shapley is quoted by WLBT as saying: “There were 2 documents that would have been covered by the judge’s order in Alabama. … The electronic files of the documents have been deleted as ordered.” Exhibit H).