Newsome Forced to Pay Legal Fees for Baseless Suit

In yet another stinging rebuke to disgraced lawyer Burt Newsome, the Alabama Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision forcing him to pay all of the legal fees for the defendants he dragged into his frivolous lawsuit against Balch & Bingham.

The state’s highest court had already basically laughed Newsome out of the courtroom, issuing an opinion that appeared in portions to poke fun at the wildly conspiratorial lawsuit Newsome filed against Balch & Bingham. But to rub salt in that wound, Newsome will now have to pay nearly $200,000 in attorneys’ fees to Clark Cooper, Claiborne Seier, John Bullock and Don Gottier -- four of the named defendants in what appeared to be a shakedown attempt by Newsome and his associate, K.B. Forbes.

In awarding the claims, Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Carole Smitherman called the claims in the lawsuit from Newsome “frivolous, groundless in fact, vexatious, or were interposed for an improper purpose such as harassment, delay or abusing discovery.” Rulings from judges do not come with harsher language, or with more shame.

Newsome’s complaint against Balch & Bingham and the named defendants claimed that Newsome had been set up and tricked into threatening a complete stranger in a parking lot with a firearm. That setup involved Balch & Bingham hiring an actor to park in a public parking lot next to Newsome’s car, prompting Newsome, who Balch associates somehow knew would be carrying a handgun and unstable enough to use it to threaten someone -- to take out his gun and order the alleged actor back in his vehicle.

Why did Balch & Bingham, one of Alabama’s largest law firms, go to this trouble? According to Newsome it was to poach one bank client -- a bank to which Balch & Bingham already provided various legal services. You could almost hear the justices on the Alabama Supreme Court laughing at this foolishness.

Judge Smitherman wasn’t laughing, however, when she slapped Newsome with a nearly $200,000 bill for dragging the defendants through years of court hearings and legal proceedings over what seems to have been a complete and utter fantasy that existed only in Newsome’s mind and on the website of his associate, Forbes, the CDLU’s CEO.

Forbes, who has been exposed repeatedly over the last 20 years for using CDLU and desperate immigrants as pawns in what several media outlets have dubbed shakedown schemes, chronicled on his website Newsome’s various fantasyland conspiracy theories depicted in court filings, apparently hoping to help Newsome squeeze a settlement out of Balch and Bingham. In breathless posts that proclaimed the end was near every other day for Balch, the wannabe-tabloid journalist attempted to spin Newsome’s increasingly desperate court filings into legal maneuvering on the level of Perry Mason.

Newsome wasn’t alone in his desperation. Near the end, as the outcome became obvious, Forbes resorted to outright racism on his blog. Manipulated photos showing Judge Smitherman in prison clothing accompanied posts questioning her intelligence and integrity. It was straight from the 1960s, Jim Crow playbook.

Now, they’ll pay for it.