Roofer Steve Hackbarth supported Tom Emmer when Emmer ran for the Minnesota House, even driving a campaign float for him in a parade.
But now Hackbarth is accusing Emmer, the Republican candidate for governor and a trial lawyer, of professional malpractice for his handling of a lawsuit.
Hackbarth hired Emmer to defend his roofing firm against a suit by a building supplier, but claims Emmer neglected the case, resulting in a $30,072 judgment against his firm and loss of his contractor license.
Emmer denies the allegation, and in turn accuses Hackbarth of using the upcoming election as leverage to negotiate a settlement.
"This is nothing more than a drive-by shooting against a guy who is running for governor," Emmer said.
Hackbarth and his attorney, Robert Hart, say that is not the case.
"I don't see how it's my client's fault that Mr. Emmer is running for governor after he committed malpractice," Hart said.
That's an article opening excerpt, so have a look at the entire item. Later, same item, this:
Ruling in favor of the supplier's motion for summary judgment in August 2009, District Judge Thomas McCarthy noted that Emmer asked for the [June 5, to July 1, 2009] continuance to "get up to speed" and that the one-month delay was reasonable. The judge said he could have simply found Hackbarth's company in default "for its failure to have a licensed legal representative file a proper response." [The judge apparently required even a closely held alter-ego corporation, separate as a legal entity from Hackbarth as an individual, to have a lawyer and not a firm officer represent it in court.]
"Is there something I did or should have done that would have changed the outcome?" he [Emmer] asked. "There's absolutely nothing."
Emmer said he didn't file paperwork for the hearing in part because Hackbarth said his business records were in his Wright County home when a fire destroyed it.
It appears Hackbarth represented himself pro se. If he filed an affidavit, pro se, explaining there was a fire that destroyed records, then it would have been redundant for Emmer to file one for the corporation, as affidavit testimony again by Hackbarth, saying the same thing.
Those wondering about the situation where it appears Emmer, or some attorney, had to appear upon short notice on behalf of the corporation owned by Hackbarth, in a situation where the supplier sought a default against Hackbarth's firm, i.e., that Hackbarth could not represent his own closely held business in court, it is a wooden headed inflexible rule as quaint and as wrong to some as the US Supreme Court saying corporations are "persons" entitled to political participation rights equal to what's accorded actual humans, i.e., to real persons vs fictitious ones. There is In re Evjen, 653 NW 2d 212 (Minn.App. 2002)(timely appeal deemed waived because unemployed benefit claimant did not appeal either pro se or via an attorney).
If Hackbarth did not submit his own affidavit, then Emmer owed the corporation a duty to file something about records and fire destruction, even if the case would have ended up a summary judgment for the supplier despite such an affidavit. Reporting on that situation is unclear.
Again, as noted in earlier coverage, Emmer asserts this is the first malpractice action against him in 20 years of practice - nothing to sneeze at since disappointed clients, even if getting what they deserve, can nonetheless (for the cost of the filing fee) take a shot at a negligence claim.
With that caveat background for readers, WCCO reported the situation and expressly attributed breaking of the story to (Karl Bremer via) the Ripple in Stillwater blog; where Bremer noted something less covered in other reporting:
Hackbarth says at the time Emmer was representing him, “he listed all the reasons why they shouldn’t have granted (the supplier) a summary judgment.” But after he lost the case, and Hackbarth hired a lawyer to file a malpractice case against Emmer, “he’s saying the reason it isn’t malpractice is because it wasn’t winnable … because he didn’t think we had a good case.” Emmer’s response to the malpractice lawsuit, says Hackbarth, “was that he didn’t file anything because he didn’t believe me. I told him, this is the first you ever said that, and you had a duty to tell me. You don’t just not file any documents. His defense (against the malpractice lawsuit) was even worse than what he did before.”
Hackbarth says he has evidence that “totally contradicts” what Emmer is saying now about the lawsuit with his supplier.
Now, Hackbarth says, “Emmer is getting all nasty about it, blaming it on me. They hired a private investigator who’s making all kinds of bogus claims. They told us we better drop the suit, and if we didn’t drop the suit, he was going to release information about the house fire.” Hackbarth says he suspects the private investigator Emmer hired is trying to “stir up some trouble.”
In addition to poking around in the circumstances of his house fire, Hackbarth says, “Now they say they’re going to sue me for slander. All he does is threaten and stuff.” And, he adds, “They keep flooding us with paperwork. They’re trying to crush me in legal fees.”
Phoenix Woman on Firedog Lake excellently picked up this "getting really nasty" thread, and tied several other threads to it, in analyzing:
Emmer’s response to all of this has been to do a scorched-earth number on Hackbarth’s reputation. In particular, he’s all but accusing Hackbarth of arson [... quotation omitted]. So did Steve Hackbarth really torch his own home, as the Emmer legal team seems to want us all to think? Neither the insurance company nor the state fire marshal’s office believe he did: The fire marshal’s office report said the cause of the fire was "undetermined" and closed the investigation, saying that it couldn’t rule out that the fire had started accidentally during kitchen remodeling. Furthermore, Hackbarth’s insurer paid damage claims on it, and considering insurance companies are always eager to avoid making huge payouts if they can at all avoid it, one would think that they’d have contested this tooth and nail instead of meekly coughing up the money.
It’s not just Tom Emmer undergoing severe meltdown. As local blogger Two-Putt Tommy states, the entire leadership, such as it is, of the Republican Party of Minnesota has gone utterly, tail-chasingly, self-destructively berserk, what with state Republican party chair Tony Sutton calling out as "quislings" the baker’s dozen of former Republican legislators, many of whom were in harness before Sutton was even born, who endorsed former Republican and current Independence Party candidate Tom Horner rather than line up behind He Who Hates Waitresses.
[links are from the original]. It is a picture of a man, a lawyer, arguably wrongly sued in this instance, but one who has shown a cantankerous, litigeous personality, as already reported, e.g., back in June of this year, by Pat Doyle of Strib. (This link, source of the Emmer photo).