BENTON – Timothy W. Williams must have testified truthfully in Illinois if a Missouri judge found his opposite testimony not credible, his former lawyer argued in a bid to preserve a $1.28 million judgment.
Attorney Roy Dripps of Maryville advanced the argument on July 20, in response to an order from U.S. District Judge Staci Yandle.
Dripps quoted Associate Judge Joseph Goff of St. Francois County, Mo., who found Williams not credible.
Dripps wrote that Goff’s ruling “precludes any finding of clear and convincing evidence that he perjured himself in this court.”
Attorney Douglas Gossow of St. Louis, responding to Yandle on the same date for defendant Central Contracting and Marine, wrote, “This conduct is off the rails.”
“The contradictions would be comical were it not for the fact that they were presented to different courts in formal proceedings designed to arrive at just outcomes,” Gossow wrote.
Williams sued Central Contracting and Marine in 2015, claiming he fell because rigging between barges slackened as he tightened a wire.
Gossow filed a counterclaim stating Central Contracting and Marine wouldn’t have hired him if he had disclosed his history of back injuries.
Gossow wrote that he claimed an injury within a week of being hired.
Yandle dismissed the counterclaim and held trial in 2017.
Physician Sunil Chand of Farmington, Mo. testified as Williams’s personal physician and character witness.
“I’m trying to tutelage him into becoming a drug counselor,” Chand said. “He is taking charge, discussing issues, trying to learn the aspects of addiction medicine.”
Williams testified that he could mow the yard but he was pretty careful about doing a lot of things. He said he could do light duty repairs to home and car but couldn’t hang drywall.
In 2018, Yandle ruled that Central Contracting and Marine failed to promulgate and enforce safety rules, train employees, or assign an adequate crew.
She awarded $529,339 in lost wages and lost benefits, past and future. She awarded $500,000 in pain and suffering, past and future, and added $216,227.55 in medical bills and interest for a total of $1,282,270.37.
Instead of pursuing judgment, Dripps settled with Central Contracting and Marine for a confidential sum in May 2018.
That November, Chand sued Williams for back rent in St. Francois County.
He claimed Williams signed a lease on a house in May 2016, moved into it with his mother, and paid no rent since that August.
Williams filed a counterclaim and attached an agreement he signed that August, to buy the house upon receiving $70,000 from settlement of an accident.
He provided a logbook of tasks he performed, mostly the sort of tasks he he had previously sworn he couldn’t do.
At trial, Chand’s lawyer trapped Williams at trial by quoting his Illinois testimony.
Judge Goff closed the case without awarding a penny to either side.
He sent a transcript to Yandle, who ordered Dripps and Gossow to respond.
Yandle wrote that Williams’s contradictions and Chand’s hidden interest “may constitute circumstances where the impartial functions of the court have been directly corrupted.”
Dripps responded, “Plaintiff’s attorneys believed that all testimony they elicited in this court was true and accurate. A judgment that is more than a year old cannot be set aside under these circumstances.”
He wrote that a lawyer’s perjury is deemed fraud on the court but perjury by a witness is not.
He wrote that society’s interest in litigation coming to an end outweighed any interest in revisiting a dispute between private parties.
He wrote that third parties were paid from the settlement including five children who received support and two doctors.
He wrote that Chand couldn’t have perjured himself when Central Contracting and Marine didn’t ask him about his financial interest at trial.
Gossow’s response to Yandle quoted Chand at trial, testifying that he knew Williams as a patient.
Gossow wrote that it seemed completely believable and it was utterly deceptive.
He wrote that Williams should have disclosed that he performed extensive labor in exchange for a place to live.
He wrote that Chand’s reward was contingent on a favorable outcome for Williams in violation of the American Medical Association ethics code.
He wrote that part of the defense was built around a notion that Williams was a serial back injury claimant.
He wrote that Williams claimed another back injury working for Chand.
“This is the fifth occasion in which Williams has filed or threatened to file a claim for a work related back injury,” he wrote.
He asked Yandle to hold the proceeds in trust and permit discovery to determine what remains and whether there has been any effort to convey it fraudulently.