Summary: Patrick Moeves charged with theft by deception and forged instruments Moeves issued fake settlement checks totaling nearly $1 million Kentucky Supreme Court disbarred Moeves in 2012 for unethical conduct   A disbarred Northern Kentucky attorney who previously served prison time for stealing from clients is again facing felony charges, this time over allegations that he used a law firm's resources to give clients fraudulent settlement checks and collect money for legal work that was never completed. Patrick Moeves, 57, is charged with theft by deception, criminal possession of a forged instrument, and unauthorized practice of law as part of an indictment filed last month in Kenton County Circuit Court. He’s accused of handing out fraudulent checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars for settlements that did not exist, and stealing from women who sought legal assistance from Drake Law for lawsuits they intended to file against the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. While a 2012 order by the Kentucky Supreme Court permanently disbarred Moeves, an investigative report obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer shows that the law firm hired him for legal research. Court filings and police records detail how Moeves is once again the target of a felony prosecution after being sentenced to eight years in prison for similar crimes. They also show how an ex-attorney with a criminal past and a history of disciplinary complaints gained another law job. Alex Lutgen Lacy, Moeves’ attorney, declined to comment on the new criminal allegations. Police began investigating Moeves in September after receiving a report of a theft occurring at the law firm related to lawsuit settlements, the report shows. Three women told police they met with Moeves at the empty law office on Sept. 3 to sign what they believed were settlement agreements for legal matters against the state agency. They were each given a check during the meeting, with one woman's totaling nearly $1 million. Eric Deters, a suspended attorney whose consulting business shares an office with the law firm, told police that no lawsuits were ever filed on behalf of the women and therefore no settlements existed. Court records also do not list any such suits filed in state or federal court. After handing over the checks, Moeves asked the women to wait 72 hours before depositing them, saying that he would send cashier’s checks instead, the report states. Those checks didn’t arrive. At least two of the women deposited the original checks, only to learn that stop-payment orders had been placed on them, records show. One woman checked her bank account two days after depositing a settlement check to discover a negative balance of more than $282,000, according to the records. It remains unclear why Moeves allegedly issued checks for such large amounts without settlement funds to compensate the women. Deters told police that he hired Moeves as a “favor” to do legal research because Moeves could no longer practice law and needed a job. He said he fired Moeves soon after learning about the checks. Moeves was assisting with the firm’s cases involving child care facilities but was not authorized to write checks and did so on an account containing no money, Deters said. Two of the women wanted to sue the social services agency after child care facilities they ran were forced to close, according to the report. The other woman is a CPR instructor whose credentials the state temporarily suspended. Investigators also learned of another woman who paid Moeves $2,000 for a lawsuit to regain custody of her children after they were removed from her home, the report states. Her mother told police that Moeves did not perform any work after taking the woman’s money. The report states that a total of $26,250 was stolen from the women. One of them told police she spent $19,750 in fees and loans to the ex-attorney, but the work was not completed and she was never repaid. In a statement to The Enquirer, Deters said that Moeves falsely told several of the firm’s clients that he settled their cases for large sums of money. He broke into the law office's safe to write the checks, but the firm halted the payments once the ordeal was discovered, Deters said, adding that Moeves also took fees unbeknownst to the law firm. “The only person who did wrong was Pat Moeves,” Deters said. “No client was harmed at all except the disappointment because they had no money coming.” He added that Moeves didn’t benefit from writing the checks. Despite theft accusations, Deters said Moeves didn’t steal money from the clients. It’s not the first time Moeves has faced charges related to falsely telling a client they had reached a civil settlement that did not exist. A client hired Moeves to represent her in a lawsuit against a surveying company beginning in 2007, court records state. Although she paid Moeves roughly $62,650 over several years, she never received the $1.5 million in settlement money he claimed she was owed. When the client contacted people named in a dismissal order Moeves provided, the records state, she learned those people either didn’t exist or didn’t know anything about the suit. Online court records do not indicate that a lawsuit was ever filed. Moeves was convicted of felony theft in 2011 and ordered to repay the woman the money she spent on his services. He was also convicted the same year in two other criminal cases for misappropriating client funds. Disciplinary records state that Moeves lied to one of those clients about being terminally ill to convince them to loan him $5,000. In the 2012 order banning Moeves from ever practicing law in the state, the Kentucky Supreme Court described Moeves’ unethical dealings with numerous clients as “appalling and reprehensible.” Records show that Moeves posted bond in the most recent criminal case and is expected to appear in court on Sept. 8. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: “Disbarred lawyer accused of handing out checks for fake settlements, theft” Reporting by Quinlan Bentley, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer

Summary: Texas court of appeals reduces punitive damages to 1.5 million Original verdict awarded 50 million to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis Jones still liable for $1.4 billion in related Connecticut judgments Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones won an appeal in one family's defamation lawsuit over his false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax, reducing the judgment against him from $50 million to about $5.5 million. Jones, who filed for bankruptcy after being sued by parents of children slain in the shooting, must still pay $1.4 billion in related judgments from a Connecticut court. In the Texas case, a jury awarded over $50 million to plaintiffs Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis. Heslin and Lewis said they suffered years of harassment and abuse at the hands of Jones' followers, who falsely believed they lied about their 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis' death. Texas law typically caps punitive damages, which made up $45.2 million of the verdict, at $750,000 per plaintiff. A three-judge panel of the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court erred by exceeding the cap, and it ordered the punitive damages reduced to $1.5 million. The trial court had allowed Heslin and Lewis' lawyers to amend their claims after they won a judgment on Jones' liability but before the ruling on damages. The change allowed the parents to successfully argue that the trauma over their son's death counted as a disability that would exempt them from the punitive damages cap. The appeals court ruled on Aug. 21 that the parents should not have been allowed to amend their claims to include the disability argument, because that argument required factual findings that the jury did not make in the case. Jones' attorney Andino Reynal said he was not surprised by the ruling and that Texas law on punitive damages is very clear. "Punitive damages are capped at $750,000 per person," Reynal said. "That was the law then and it remains the law now." Attorneys for Heslin and Lewis did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jones claimed for years that the 2012 killing of 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged with actors as part of a government plot to seize Americans’ guns. He has since acknowledged the shooting occurred. Jones has also tried to challenge the punitive damages in the Connecticut case, but the state's court upheld most of those damages, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take Jones' appeal. Some of Jones' assets were liquidated during his personal bankruptcy, but a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled that Jones remains liable for most of the defamation verdicts. The parody news site the Onion has sought to acquire some of Jones' intellectual property in bankruptcy, and it began posting parody Infowars-branded videos in July after an earlier failed attempt to acquire the Infowars name in a disputed bankruptcy sale. (Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; editing by Blake Brittain and Lisa Shumaker)

Summary: Teen plaintiff identified as P. M-Y. drops claims Lawsuit consolidated among 3,300 cases in California Meta defends against addiction and safety allegations A teen whose lawsuit was a test case in litigation accusing social media companies of deliberately addicting young people and fueling a mental health crisis dropped her claims against the owners of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat on Aug. 20, according to a court filing. The plaintiff, a 15-year-old girl from New Jersey identified in California court records as P. M-Y., had alleged the platforms' owners — Meta Platforms, Google and Snap Inc. — contributed to her social media addiction, depression and self-harm. The companies said she dropped her claims without any payment. TikTok, which was also a defendant in her case, had previously settled her claims. Emily Jeffcott, an attorney for P.M-Y., said in a statement her client chose to dismiss the remainder of her claims out of a desire to resume her life. She "initiated this process with the goal of holding social media companies accountable and to push for changes to protect young people like herself," Jeffcott said. Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, is defending itself at two trials over claims from states that it designed its platforms to be addictive to children and misled the public about their safety. One trial, which began the week of Aug. 17 and deals with the claims of 29 states, is proceeding in federal court in Oakland, California, while another, over claims brought by Tennessee, is ongoing in state court in Nashville. The lawsuits are among thousands brought by individuals, states and school districts against social media companies over claims their platforms harm children. The companies have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on their platforms. P. M-Y.'s lawsuit was among more than 3,300 personal injury cases brought by individuals that were consolidated in California state court in Los Angeles. It was selected as one of three "bellwether" cases scheduled to go to trial in October. “This plaintiff had a significant mental health condition that pre-dated her use of social media, and it's clear that many of these cases fit the same pattern,” Meta said in a statement, adding that it would vigorously defend against the remaining cases. In a statement, Google-owned YouTube said the decision to drop the case affirms “our longstanding position that we provide safe, age-appropriate experiences and strong parental controls for young people and families.” A Snap spokesperson said in a statement the company remains focused on strengthening safeguards, tools and educational resources to support users' safety, privacy and well-being. Two other cases brought by teens making similar claims against the same companies are scheduled for trial in October, according to court records. TikTok has already settled those cases. Another bellwether case ended before trial in July, when a teenage plaintiff dropped his claims against Meta after the other defendants settled. The first individual trial ​in the litigation, which ended in March, resulted in verdicts amounting to $4.2 million against ​Meta and $1.8 million against Google in a case brought by a woman who said she became addicted to social media platforms at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design. TikTok and Snap settled that ⁠case before ​trial.  (Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Cynthia Osterman)