Category Archives: Financial

Man vs. Bank: Who’s Right?

On February 19th, Londell McMillan sued Barclays Bank for a loan default “fabrication”. The British bank had sued former partner of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s entertainment, media, and sports group, just a few months earlier, for a $540,000 loan payment from 2010.

The case began when McMillan joined LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & McRae, right around the time of their merger with Dewey Ballantine, and was told he needed to pay a contribution to the firm’s operations. McMillan claims however that he never took out the loan, as the CEO emailed him two days before the due date saying it was already paid. Barclays declined to comment.

Children’s Lawyer Jailed for Misallocating Award Funds

John William Coates, a Texas Children’s Personal Injury Lawyer, pleaded guilty last August to withholding $600,000 from the Travis County court registry and his clients from 2002 through 2010. As an attorney to the minors, Coates was to accept awards on behalf of his clients from insurance companies and place that money into a court registry until the child turned 18.

Coates however, kept many of the awards for his personal use, but would deposit the funds into the registry before the child came of age. Sometimes though, the money wasn’t there in time.

Coates now resides at Travis County Jail under a 10-year prison deal, and could be released on probation after six months for good behavior if he agrees to certain conditions, like relinquishing his law license.

Hospitals Financially Ruin Patients in North Carolina

Joyce Jones was admitted to the hospital with serious abdominal pains.  She had no job and a minimal heatlh insurance policy.  However, a social worker at Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy told her that the hospital had a fund to help patients like her.  As a result, she thought her bill would be minimal.  However, she soon received a bill for $34,000.  In 2006, the hospital sued her and won, putting a lien on her small home.

This hospital is one of two in North Carolina who still sues patients, despite the fact that on average they make a profit of $300 million a year and are tax exempt, saving them from paying millions in taxes.  To put this in perspective, out of the 40,000 lawsuits filed by NC hospitals, 12,000 were from this hospital.  When looking at most of the lawsuits filed by the hospital, most of the defendants, or patients, were uninsured and that a significant number of them should have qualified for free hospital care.

In Jones’ case she offered to pay $10,000 and go on an installment play to repay the rest.  However, the hospital rejected the offer, furthering proving that they were not willing to work with her at all.  Now, many are wondering why hospitals are sueing so many patients when they could not only afford to help but also when their missions are that of charity.

Orange County Sued over Illegal Re-appropriation of Taxes

California state recently filed suit against Orange County for $73.5 million in property taxes that should have been passed on to the state.  Orange County withheld property taxes that normally pay for K-12 schools and community colleges because they believe that money is rightfully theirs.  Additionally, they are relying on the state to make the schools “whole”, so that they do not have to forfeit the money that they basically stole from the state.

While a law does exist to make K-12 schools whole when property tax revenue falls, it does not include community colleges.  Furthermore, the state contends that the county is illegally relying on a provision that is intended to address natural property tax declines, “not from a county’s illegal manipulation of its fiscal affairs.”  The county has yet to responded on the claims.