National News

State News:

thetnholler

View more on Instagram

Local News:

Judge finds Pelley, Irion actions 'fraud upon the court' in ouster case

Nearly one year ago, Athens City Council member Dick Pelley brought an ouster attempt against then-Athens Mayor Bo Perkinson in an attempt to remove Perkinson from office.

Now, Pelley’s attempt has been termed a “fraud upon the court” and his and his attorney, Van Irion’s, actions deemed fraudulent leading up to the ouster hearing were “both intentional and egregious.”

In September of 2022, Pelley attempted to oust Perkinson from his role and the effort was taken before McMinn County Circuit Court Judge Michael Sharp for an evidentiary hearing. During that hearing, the question before Sharp was whether or not to temporarily suspend Perkinson until the final hearing on his expulsion could be held.

The disagreements between Pelley and Perkinson had been ongoing for some time, with Pelley regularly attempting to make motions and declarations during council meetings without being on the agenda or discussing them ahead of time, while he had charged Perkinson with intentionally keeping him off the agenda. The ouster specifically referenced the Aug. 16, 2022 council meeting where Pelley claimed Perkinson “knowingly and repeatedly violated Council Member Dr. Pelley’s basic rights and privileges...”

During that hearing, several of the petitioners who allegedly were backing Pelley’s ouster attempt were called into question. The petitioners, it was argued by Perkinson’s defense attorneys, had signed onto the case under false pretenses and largely had no opinion on Perkinson’s role as mayor. Sharp ultimately ruled that there was “no adequate evidence” to suspend Perkinson and the ouster attempt was dropped by Pelley in early October of last year.

That was not the end of the case, however, as Perkinson and his attorneys petitioned the court to have Pelley and Irion pay all court costs and attorney fees — totaling $55,676.27. That request was heard in May of this year and, on Aug. 18, Sharp made his ruling that Pelley and Irion must pay all costs and that Irion must self-report to the Board of Professional Responsibility in regard to the findings. At the same time, he gave his detailed view of the legitimacy of the case.

“In addition to the findings above, and based upon all of the facts ... the court finds that the ouster suit itself was, and is, a fraud upon this court,” Sharp’s decision reads. “The court finds, based upon the declarants’ testimony, their declarations were simply untrue on their face, based upon the dates of the signatures alone.”

There were 18 total people termed “declarants” whose petitions Pelley and Irion claimed they had collected and were in favor of Perkinson’s ouster. Sharp, however, said that was not the case.

“Furthermore, many of the declarants themselves testified they had no knowledge at all of anything set out in the petition,” he wrote. “The declarants who were in fact the petitioners, for the most part, stated not only had they not met Attorney Irion, he was not their attorney. Again, this has not been disputed by Attorney Van Irion or anyone else. Furthermore, many of the declarants had no knowledge of the lawsuit or what it was about.”

Sharp suggested this may not have been an accident on the part of Irion.

“Based upon these findings, the court finds that as an officer of the court, Mr. Irion’s actions are, at a minimum, reckless and, at a maximum, they were done in bad faith,” the decision reads.

Sharp cited Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 72 that requires any declarations be dated and that they ensure that what they are declaring is true “under the penalty of perjury.”

However, the meeting the declarants were allegedly referencing was the Aug. 16, 2022 city council session and “not one of the declarations is actually dated on or after Aug. 16, 2022.”

Only six of the 18 apparently were dated “at all” and all of those had dates of Aug. 2, 2022 or before on them, according to Sharp. The remainder of the 12 declarations, including Pelley’s, were not dated at all, Sharp noted.

“Therefore, the court finds that all of the declarations are legally insufficient,” the decision reads. “The court finds that all of the declarations, that were actually dated, are dated weeks before the events in the verified petition even occurred. Therefore, the court finds they could not possibly have supported an ouster based upon those events at the Aug. 16 council meeting that had not yet even occurred.”

Sharp also looked into the claims made in the declarations, checking to see if the people who signed them were actually in favor of ousting Perkinson. He reported that several of the people who signed declarations were neutral to Perkinson remaining as mayor and at least one didn’t even know he was mayor.

One declarant voluntarily requested dismissal of her declaration, stating she was “unaware as to what the petition sought.” Another declarant told the court that she had never seen the writ of ouster and “had not read” the lawsuit against Perkinson.

A third declarant said that he had been given the document to sign by Pelley on Aug. 2 and “Mr. Pelley did not tell him that he was signing something concerning something that was allegedly going to happen on Aug. 16, 2022.”

Another woman reportedly said she signed the declaration “because her husband wanted her to do it” and she did not know it was going to be part of a lawsuit. When asked by the court, she said she “does not know now, she did not know in the past and she had never known of anything that Mr. Perkinson had done wrong.”

There were also several declarants that Sharp said had never heard of or met Irion until the court deposed them about the declaration they signed. That was, Sharp noted in the decision, despite Irion claiming in the writ of ouster that he was their attorney.

“The court takes judicial notice that each of the declarations were simply blank forms, with blanks for the name and signature,” Sharp’s decision reads. “The court finds that the declarations were prepared by Attorney Van Irion and were handed out by either the petitioner Adolphus (Dick) Pelley or possibly another individual not named as a declarant.”

Later in the decision, Sharp noted that one of the declarants said he signed the declaration “at the request of his family’s landlord, Glenn Whiting. (The declarant) testified that he had never read the petition, that he did not know what the petition was requesting, nor did he know what the subject matter of the lawsuit was.” The declarant also said he knew nothing about an ouster, who the mayor of Athens was or what Perkinson’s role was.

Sharp then noted that if Pelley wanted Perkinson out of office, the proper way to go about that was through an election. Perkinson would, a couple months after the ouster hearing, lose his bid for re-election to the council.

“The court finds that the proper remedy to remove Mr. Perkinson, or anyone else similarly situated, from office was and is in fact an election,” the decision reads. “The court finds, based upon the declarations and all of the facts and evidence before the court, that there was never a factual or legal basis to have brought this action.”

The Arts:

Just for fun: