July 31, 2002 - a process server knocked on our door at about 9:00 p.m. to serve notice that we are being sued by Dr. Mark Lynn Nichols for $491,238.00. http://www.houstonent.com/dr-mark-nichols/
Dr. Nichols' false medical records on my husband caused him denial of health insurance. When my polite request to Dr. Nichols to correct his records met with an arrogant refusal, and a letter to his licensing board didn't help, I published the story on my web site. In the "financial information" we were finally able to receive from Nichols in our lawsuit, which did NOT prove any loss to him, it showed that his average income at that time was well over $300,000 PER MONTH. Yes, that's Three Hundred Thousand PER MONTH. In his lawsuit, he claimed my piddly little web site financially "harmed" him. No, it didn't. It only "harmed" his ego and God Syndrome. (I doubt if anyone other than Killeen and Nichols had even read my report about Nichols. At the time I didn't know to include meta names/tags so that it would show up on search engines, but now I do.)
I see Nichols' organization now offers "Allergy" treatment and "Plastic Surgery," and has 12 locations in the Houston area and includes numerous doctors. Personally, I'd beware of any contact with doctors associated with Nichols and his money-making machine.
Dr. Nichols had a team of lawyers headed by Robert Joseph Killeen, Jr. http://killeenlaw.publishpath.com/ (The office is now listed as Killeen & Stern; back then it was Killeen & Wheat.) If there are lawyers who are more arrogant, dishonest (and not very smart), I'd hate to meet them. (Actually, I don't want to meet ANY lawyers because in the US they're mostly cut from the same cloth.)
By the way, if you read Killeen's "promotion" of himself on his web site, included is: "Mr. Killeen has a Martindale Hubbell rating of AV, the highest rating for legal ability and professional and ethical standards." Hahhahahahaaaa! Just goes to show that the "ratings" given to lawyers is a crock! Don't believe a word of the flowery statements. (Or the flowery statements about doctors for that matter.)
My husband and I represented ourselves, "Pro Se." We already knew quite a bit about the law because of a legal study group we belonged to, but we had no idea how to handle a case like this. Nevertheless, at first I was kind of excited about going up against lawyers "pro se." But during almost a year that the case dragged on, my enthusiasm for the law (and definitely my belief in justice) was destroyed.
It took hundreds of hours of research and preparing documents. Killeen and his crew inundated us with frivolous motions which we had to answer, hoping to just wear us down. Many times I stayed up all night preparing documents necessary to be filed in the morning. Meanwhile, Killeen and crew broke rule after rule of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedures, lied under oath, released my husband's medical records without permission (a crime) and even committed forgery (another crime). Should an attorney get away with an act for which an ordinary citizen would end up behind bars? They got away with everything.
I caught them in all their chicanery, but they didn't get so much as a slap on the wrist--by the judge or by the Bar. Still, I chucked because try as they may, I stayed one step ahead of them, just little ole me, the "ignorant" pro se defendant. If the deck hadn't been stacked, I'd have handily whupped their ass in court.
And
despite all the work and frustration, there were some amusing moments. One was during deposition
(in which Killeen was rude and overbearing). Extremely
laughable was Robert Killeen’s habit of rolling his eyeballs up into his head
until only the whites showed, while simultaneously (and rapidly) batting his
eyelashes. What a buffoon!
See his picture here http://killeenlaw.publishpath.com/robert-killeen-jr
and imagine him doing this.
Another amusing moment was during the deposition of Dr. Nichols. Nichols’ sleazy lawyer, ROBERT JOSEPH KILLEEN, JR., had asked me my social security number, where I lived, etc., but when I asked the same of Nichols, lawyer Killeen gave his usual “irrelevant, personal, harassing,” etc, objection. The same when I asked Nichols for his home address.
But Nichols (and Killeen) looked like deer caught in the headlights when I asked Nichols, “Is your social security number 585-02-5434?” “Is your home address 4904 PALMETTO, BELLAIRE, TEXAS 77401?” See, we paid big bucks to a private detective to ferret out a lot of interesting information about Nichols and others involved in this case...…none of which would have been necessary if the judges had enforced the Discovery rules. The two corrupt judges in the case were:
Judge Tazewell Lamar McCorkle, Jr., married to Regina Giovannini. At the time, they resided at 1242 Ridgeley Drive, Houston, TX 77055-6741. (The property was in HER name.)
Mary Katherine (“Katie”) Kennedy, married to Andrew B. Noel. At the time, they resided at 4208 Sunset, Houston, TX 77005-1908.
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See HERE for UPDATED information (as of 2015) for Nichols, the lawyers, and judges in this case.
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Back to lawsuit information: We heard that Judge McCorkle had aspirations for the Supreme Court (apparently he was unsuccessful--see the update link above), so after Killeen and crew made such a criminal mess out of it, which McCorkle allowed, he then tried to distance himself from this case as much as possible, even having a "visiting judge" (Katie Kennedy) handle part of the case. Plus no way was he going to preside over the trial. He decided Judge Katie Kennedy would do that. (She was even more biased against us than McCorkle, if that were possible.)
On April 14, 2003 in an oral hearing, with trial having been scheduled for May, Judge McCorkle finally said he is going to hold everyone's feet to the fire to follow procedure to the most minute detail. Gee, why didn't he do this sooner? He allowed Killeen and crew to break rules and procedures right and left, plus commit forgery, for almost a year--and he didn't say a thing about anything until a month before trial. (We had followed procedure, so his ire was obviously directed toward Killeen and crew for the dozens of motions foisted on him, which were nothing but attempts to obfuscate the issue and harass us.)
Judge McCorkle
was furious at
the way in which this case had been conducted. (But again,
he allowed it to develop that way.) He again referred to this case as
a "tar baby" and said at this point, no one can win it.
He was furious because this had not been conducted in the way in which the legal
process is supposed to work. (He should have been
furious at himself, because he allowed the criminal acts and breaking of the
rules by Killeen and crew and their inundating the court with dozens of
frivolous motions.) With the position Killeen kept putting us in, there was no way to do
our side any differently. We had to answer every ridiculous motion he inundated
the judges with. The lawyers should know better--but then again,
I believe that a competent, ethical lawyer would never have taken Nichols' case
in the first place. Nichols didn't have a case to begin with. (The
judges knew it, too.) For a
lawyer to agree to file suit over such nonsense is, in my opinion, an insult to
the legal profession.
Neither McCorkle or Kennedy EVER addressed the criminal actions of the lawyers and of Nichols, must less did anything about them.
Contrary to what Judge McCorkle said, because the deck was stacked, "someone" could win this "tar baby" of a case--and it would be Killeen. When we saw his Motion in Limine filed just before trial date, we knew that Judge Katie Kennedy, who would preside over the trial, would not allow us to present anything that would prove Nichols didn't have a case. (After you read the shenanigans of Judge Katie Kennedy in the Chronology here--Page 4--you'll know how we came to that conclusion.) The Motion in Limine, among other things, requested that the affidavit from our CPA could not be admitted. Therefore, at the last minute we decided not to even attend the kangaroo-court trial and waste even more of our time. Thus the $311,000 judgment against each of us was entered by Judge Katie Kennedy. That's a total of $622,000. Bizarre, right?
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