Nashville attorney John E. Clemmons was sentence to 25 years in jail for stealing more than $1 million from wards entrusted to him in probate courts in Davidson and Rutherford counties in Tennessee.
The Metro Nashville government will be paying $300,000 to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of the estate of William Link, a man who was cheated out of nearly $800,000 by Clemmons.
Clemmons was first apponted as Link’s conservator in 2003, and he was placed in charge of Link’s estate following his death in 2004. The estate funds were earmarked for the benefit of Link’s disabled daughter.
After Clemmons misdeeds became public, attorney Paul Gontarek was appointed to replace him. Gontarek subsequently filed suit against Metro government charging that if the probate clerk had been doing his job monitoring Clemmons, the theft would not have occurred.
Clemmons was required to file annual accounting reports with the court; however, he hadn’t filed a report on the Link case since Sept. 15, 2004.
Metro government argued that any claim against Metro would have to have been filed within one year of the last time Clemmons took money from the estate which was April of 2013. Gontarek didn’t file suit against Metro until 2014.
Though the circuit court accepted Metro’s argument, the appeals court rejected that conclusion.
“As we understand it, Metro’s defense is predicated on the notion that Mr. Clemmons could have sued for the losses to the estate that stemmed from his own malfeasance. Respectfully we find such a proposition to be absurd,” Justice Arnold Goldin wrote, adding that the suit filed by Gontarek was in fact “timely.”
Gontarek said that they are pleased with the settlement, and that the recovered funds have been and will continue to be for the benefit of the Link estate.
Information excerpts Tennessean
