In April, 2015 my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks filed pro se his third lawsuit against us in Connecticut, where my husband and I had not lived since September, 2013. We had not published our website since March, 2013 so any claims my brother made were past the two-year statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit. After multiple phone calls to attorneys who used the standard statements that they will not take cases involving a pro se plaintiff, we were finally able to find a young attorney named Brandon Marley who promised to fight our case aggressively. As events unfolded we have every reason to believe that Attorney Marley equated our desperation with dollar signs. Despite our insistence, Attorney Marley failed to cite Connecticut’s statute of limitations prohibiting my brother Ken Parks from filing pro se his baseless lawsuit against us, failed to cite that most of my brother Ken’s Complaint didn’t state a claim for which relief could be granted, and he failed to properly cite other precedent cases. Consequently, although most of my brother Ken’s baseless pro se lawsuit was dismissed, one part remained undismissed.
Public court records bear out the fact that after two and a half years of unethical delay tactics over our protests, Attorney Marley failed to obey the court’s scheduling order date for filing a Summary Judgment near the end of 2017. We contacted a number of other attorneys who confirmed this was a very serious issue and they advised us to contact the senior attorney where Attorney Marley worked. We contacted the senior attorney in the firm and asked him to “light a fire” under Attorney Marley to just do his job. Instead, after reviewing our case, the senior attorney took over our case, had to refile motions that Attorney Marley had done poorly, and filed a hard-hitting Summary Judgment and Motion for Non-Suit against my brother Ken Parks. Due to motions filed by the senior attorney the court also ordered my brother Ken to produce tax records, medical records and other documents that my brother claimed he had, but he failed to obey that order. My brother Ken Parks, filing as Pastor Kenneth Parks, then filed pro se his fourth lawsuit against us in Washington County, Tennessee in 2018 while virtually the same lawsuit was still pending in New London, Connecticut court and while he was refusing to comply with the Connecticut court’s orders. Very shortly after the senior attorney filed the Summary Judgment and Motion for Non-Suit, my brother Ken Parks apparently recognized that a judgment was impending against him and withdrew his Connecticut lawsuit with prejudice, even though he had filed virtually the same lawsuit against us in Tennessee. My brother Ken Parks also filed a rambling screed against the New London, Connecticut judges and the senior attorney, claiming he was exposing their “wicked deeds of darkness.” Whereas Attorney Brandon Marley had taken two and a half years to do virtually nothing for us to end my brother’s baseless, defamatory, libelous lawsuit (which was beyond the statute of limitations), the senior attorney shut down my brother Ken lawsuit in about three months. As of early January, 2018, Attorney Brandon Marley was no longer employed at the senior attorney’s law firm (apparently fired?). Attorney Brandon Marley’s very poor handling of our case – as demonstrated in his own public court filings in our case – is public record. The senior attorney gave us some monetary compensation for Attorney Brandon Marley’s poor handling of our case.
We reported irrefutable proof of Attorney Brandon Marley’s violations of various codes of professional conduct to Connecticut’s Statewide Grievance Committee (again, court records are public records). In his response Attorney Marley contradicted himself, bragging about his experience and accomplishments, yet then claimed that because he was only a junior attorney any mistakes he made were all the senior attorney’s fault. Interestingly, Attorney Marley admitted that there was an “acrimonious departure” from the senior attorney’s law firm. Yet Attorney Gregory Benoit, who heads Connecticut’s Statewide Grievance Committee’s review panel for New London County, used a wrong address to mail to us one of the Committee’s notices, and Attorney Benoit ignored the documentation and facts we presented (if he and the review panel even read our complaint) and he ignored what appear to be at least partial self-incriminating statements made by Attorney Marley. Attorney Benoit made glaring factual errors (such as dates and other factual details found in the public record) in his short explanation dismissing our complaint against Attorney Brandon Marley. Legal malpractice attorneys we spoke with confirmed to us that Attorney Marley did indeed violate the professional codes of conduct and should have been disciplined. Those attorneys also told us that they believe that Connecticut’s Statewide Grievance Committee falls short too many times in failing to discipline offending attorneys, especially young attorneys, who clearly violate the professional codes of conduct. We found one case that highlights how questionably the Statewide Grievance Committee operates, yet without any consequences for that, at best, questionable behavior: Read about it here.
