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Former colleagues of convicted killer Alex Murdaugh – and the law firm that employed them – have been dismissed from a civil suit alleging bad faith and a conspiracy that they say resulted in a law firm client being deprived of settlement funds.
Also dismissed as a defendant in the case was the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), a government-run hospital system in the Palmetto State.
According to a stipulation of dismissal filed in Hampton County, S.C. on January 3, 2024, attorneys on both sides of the complaint agreed to dismiss attorney Ronnie Crosby, attorney William Barnes III and the law firm formerly known as Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Elzroth & Detrick (PMPED).
Murdaugh remains a defendant in the suit – as does disgraced banker Russell Laffitte and the financial institution he formerly led, Palmetto State Bank (PSB).
Originally filed in October 2022, the lawsuit is based on the belief that Manuel Santis-Cristiani – a resident of Chiapas, Mexico – was not paid all he was owed after Murdaugh and PMPED negotiated the outcome of a product liability lawsuit on his behalf following a 2008 motor vehicle accident in Colleton County.
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Murdaugh associate Blanca Simpson acted as translator during mediation in this case – and was also present at the bank on November 15, 2016 when Russell Laffitte wired settlement funds to Santis-Cristiani.
According to court filings, Simpson noticed a discrepancy between the amount of funds referenced in the settlement agreement and the amount paid to Santis-Cristiani. PMPED later discovered that $70,000 held back from the settlement to cover Santis-Cristiani’s medical bills was instead stolen by Alex Murdaugh. After Cristiani filed the lawsuit, PMPED placed the missing money in escrow – and MUSC became interpleaders to the case.
As a condition of the stipulation of dismissal, Santis-Cristiani and his attorneys will be paid the $70,000.
The case had been scheduled for a motions hearing in Hampton County on January 16, 2024 in the courtroom of S.C. circuit court judge Carmen Mullen, but the motions to be reviewed were directed at the now-dismissed law firm defendants.
It is unclear now whether that hearing will be held, or whether Mullen – who has been implicated in connection with several questionable settlements tied to Murdaugh’s firm – should be sitting in judgment of any cases tied to this law firm.
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THE STIPULATION …
(Via: S.C. Fourteenth Circuit)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Callie Lyons is a journalist, researcher, and author whose investigative work can be found in media outlets, publications, and documentaries all over the world – most recently in the Parisian newspaper Le Monde and a German documentary for ProSieben. Lyons also appears in Citizen Sleuth – a 2023 documentary exploring the genre of true crime.
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4 comments
Judge Mullen should not be anywhere near any proceedings evenly remotely involving the Murdaughs.
Amen, Sista!! You’da thunk she’s figured that out by this time ……….
I clicked on this story by mistake; but since it counts against my free ones, I might as well use it to post my BRILLIANT solution to the last piece of the puzzle sealing Alex Murdaugh’s (“AM”) innocence of the murders once and for all.
It incidentally shows AM’s former law firm had incentives to cooperate with the Prosecution; but that is for another post.
Thank God, I solved everything; and the last pieces for me were Kenny Kinsey, Ph.D.’s talk at CrimeCon 2023 and my going back and reviewing Alex Murdaugh’s (“AM”) defense team’s January 2023 Motion for Sanctions, basically to exclude the white T-shirt AM was wearing when he discovered Maggie’s (“MKBM”) and Paul’s (“PTM”) bodies and which he gave IMMEDIATELY to responding Law Enforcement Officers when they asked for it.
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
And boy, did AM’s defense team get played big time by Creighton Waters and Kenny Kinsey, Ph.D.!
Kenny Kinsey, Ph.D. ends that presentation with a report of his telling Creighton to put that shirt back in the closet.
In other interviews, either Waters or Kenny reported that Waters wanted Kenny to be “the canari in the mine,” meaning let Kenny say what he thinks and leave Creighton to spin it.
I hope that Kenny reads this and has the integrity (better late than never) that Becky Hill’s co-author showed by severing ties with “Boo” after initially defending her. And I do not know whether the photo of a shirt with stains on top is THE actual AM T-shirt or a dramatization of it.
But assuming it is, Kenny says it LOOKS like spatter but he cannot say it was BLOOD spatter because the hemo-trace tested negative for HUMAN blood.
That Tom Bevel charlatan from Oklahoma had first opined it was NOT spatter, then recanted and, for thousands of dollars, opined that it was spatter and the hemo-trace was a false negative.
When Tom Bevel got exposed in AM’s defense team’s motion, and based on Kenny’s advice, Creighton gave AM’s defense a Trojan Horse: all right, the State will not introduce that shirt.
Boy did that doom AM while his defense celebrated that pyrrhic victory!
In the absence of the ACTUAL shirt, the Prosecution suggested to the jury (and to the internet world from which the jury took its “facts”) that AM somehow buried his VERY bloody clothes AND the murder weapons behind his parents’ house in Almeda and put on a freshly laundered T-shirt which, according to one self-contradicting agent “smelled of laundry detergent.”
So, what is my solution which FINALLY exonerates AM and should convince ALL his haters who have any intelligence, self-respect, and/or conscience left?
Read carefully:
Bubba came in with his jaws clutching a bird that was flapping so hard MKBM thought it was “a Ginae” but PTM and AM corrected her “it’s a chicken.”
Remember the saying: “like a chicken with its head cut off”? An injured or captured bird is NOT a still one but a flapping attempting-to escape one.
Those tiny stains on top of AM’s T-shirt are bird-blood.
Proof? The LCV test for ANY blood was positive BUT the hemo-trace for HUMAN blood was negative.
And when was the hemo-trace test done? Right after AM’s August 2021 interview when it was clear that SLED had Paul’s video with Bubba and the chicken.
So, that shirt with TINY specks of NON-HUMAN blood around the neck and shoulders is THE one AM was wearing at the kennels when he extracted the bird from Bubba’s jaws then hurried to Almeda before it got too dark and back to enjoy some time with MKBM and PTM.
That means ALL AM’s clothes that day are accounted for, nothing hidden, AND the T-shirt AM gave law enforcement was the one AM wore to AND out of the kennels in the evening of 7 June 2021.
Since that T-shirt has no HUMAN blood spatter, AM could not have been the shooter.
I have previously explained why the Prosecution’s time of death is medically wrong; and a review of Kenny’s opinions strengthens my inferences that the REAL killers were two or more females with experience hunting animals but no prior military or law-enforcement experience of aiming at human beings. Those females went to Moselle armed with PTM’s previously-stolen guns and with the knowledge of PTM’s whereabouts because he was being SECRETLY followed and videotaped by Sara Capelli. That is based on the sloppiness and the strange angles of the aiming.
Who are those LIKELY females?
I hope they don’t shoot ME before I get to tell you because, by now, those females know how to shoot human beings and get away with it.
Please pray for me
The real problem is not how much Alex Murdaugh (“AM”) kept for himself out of the clients’ supposed settlements but how the settlements were so high.
Apparently, he was violating Rule 4.5:
RULE 4.5: THREATENING CRIMINAL PROSECUTION
A lawyer shall not present, participate in presenting, or threaten to present criminal or professional disciplinary charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter.
Comment – This Rule is not included in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The language of this Rule is based upon DR 7 105 of the Code of Professional Responsibility.
AM possibly had dirt on the insurance defense lawyers opposing his cases; and with his connections to the prosecutorial powers, he COULD HAVE used the pay-or-get-pinned tactic.
What goes around comes around. That tactic was apparently used on AM by pinning the murders on him to take the high settlements from him.
The return of some money to some clients does not solve the deeper problem: the MAFIA-ization of prosecutorial powers.