Opinion ID: 1346801
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Employment Offer

Text: Mr. Skinner filed an affidavit with the court [13] in which he stated that, while at a two-day mediation meeting in the Joy case in January 2009, he was approached before the meeting began by the in-house attorney representing MDC. The affidavit represents that after the in-house counsel informally expressed her settlement concerns in the three pending radon lawsuits, she asked Mr. Skinner to consider becoming MDC's lawyer to coordinate its nationwide radon litigation. Mr. Skinner stated in the affidavit that his impression from this offer was that Richmond American Homes sought both to create a conflict between me and my clients and to conflict me out of future radon cases. A motion for sanctions seeking default judgment and striking Richmond's answers and defenses was filed by Respondents. Although the Annessa letter was the springboard for filing the motion, Respondents also raised the discovery issues and the job offer as demonstration of a pattern of litigation misconduct supporting the sanction request. The matter of sanctions was the primary issue addressed by the trial court at a hearing on October 30, 2009. Over Respondents' objection, [14] the court permitted Petitioners to call Forest J. Bowman, retired West Virginia University College of Law Professor, to testify regarding the propriety of communication between the parties in the form of the Annessa Letter. At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial judge determined that sanctions would be imposed without deciding what sanctions would be appropriate. The nature of the sanctions was announced in the order dated November 4, 2009. However, both the November 4 and November 18, 2009, orders relate findings the lower court made in arriving at the sanctions of granting the motions for default judgment and striking the defenses. In these orders the lower court in essence found that: the Annessa Letter was an unauthorized communication which contained false statements and attempted to undermine the relationship between the plaintiffs and their counsel; Respondents failed to cooperate fully in the discovery process; and the MDC job offer of employment was an improper attempt to subvert the plaintiffs' counsel to work against the interests of his clients. The lower court stated in the November 18, 2009, order that the identified acts of the defendants taken together ... make a picture of not only obstructionist conduct, but [also] a desire to fragment the efforts of the Plaintiffs in this litigation and as such, the aggregated conduct of Richmond merits sanctions. [15] Richmond subsequently invoked this Court's original jurisdiction, seeking a writ of prohibition to stop the enforcement of the two orders. On January 14, 2010, this Court issued a rule to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not be granted.