This is a practice of Obama care before the death panels take place. Death is determined by the Guardian not by God
Nashville attorney faces theft charges in conservatorship case
He served as conservator for retired teacher
A Nashville attorney, whose license to practice law was recently suspended, has been charged with theft of more than $60,000 from a client.
John E. Clemmons, 65, was charged last week with theft from a retired teacher. While serving as the conservator of the Rutherford County resident, Clemmons paid himself more than $50,000 in fees without court approval.
Paul Housch, Clemmons’ attorney, said his client already had entered a not guilty plea to the criminal charge. He declined to respond to the charge, stating that it would be addressed in court. An initial hearing is scheduled for June 7.
Attempts to reach Clemmons on Tuesday were unsuccessful. The phone at his Gay Street law office was disconnected.
The charges were initially spelled out in an April order from the state Supreme Court which indefinitely suspended Clemmons’ license to practice law, concluding that allowing him to continue posed “a threat of substantial harm to the public.”
Chancellor Robert E. Corlew III on March 5 removed Clemmons as Russell Church’s conservator. Rutherford County Clerk and Master John A.W. Bratcher then referred the matter to District Attorney General Robert Whitesell, whose office brought the charges to a grand jury.
The indictment was unsealed last week.
Clemmons also is facing charges in a civil case brought by the daughter of a woman for whom Clemmons served as a conservator for more than four years.
The suit charges that Clemmons misappropriated about $450,000 from the estate of Nannie P. Malone, who died last year.
The suit on behalf of Malone’s daughter, Teresa A. Lyle, charges that Clemmons breached his fiduciary duty and failed to properly account for thousands of dollars in proceeds when Malone’s property was auctioned.
The insurance company that provided a bond for Clemmons under his services in the conservatorship has filed a cross claim against Clemmons for the value of the $300,000 bond.
Walter F. Roche Jr. can be reached at 615-259-8086 orwroche@tennessean.com.
Big bills cost Davidson County public guardian her job
Jeanan Mills Stuart defends actions after charging her legal rate of up to $225 an hour to run errands
Judge David Randy Kennedy had recommended Stuart for job.
Citing “significant concerns” that she charged excessive fees to her clients, Davidson County Probate Judge David Randy Kennedy on Wednesday permanently suspended public guardian Jeanan Mills Stuart and vowed to help seek her replacement.
Stuart, who had held the job for five years, submitted a resignation letter effective in a week. Her letter was forwarded to members of Metro Council along with a letter from Kennedy announcing her termination. In her letter, Stuart defended all her actions and blamed controversy for her departure.
In his five-paragraph letter to the council, Kennedy wrote that while most conservatorship cases, including those assigned to Stuart, “have been handled properly; even the perception that excessive fees have been charged is inexcusable.
Stuart’s termination and simultaneous resignation follow a series ofTennessean stories raising questions about her billing practices. The Tennessean’s analysis showed she regularly charged lawyer rates of $200 to $225 per hour for tasks such as taking wards shopping, sorting their clothes, moving them into an assisted living facility or running errands for them. In one case, she charged more than $1,200 to take a ward on a shopping trip to Dillards and Walgreens.
In an accompanying preliminary report on his review of Stuart’s currently active cases, Kennedy wrote, “There are several instances in Ms. Stuart’s time record entries where she charged her standard hourly rate for services, which should have been performed by a subordinate, paralegal or other designated service provider at a less expensive non-professional rate.”
The public guardian is appointed by the court to take control of the financial and physical needs of people unable to care for themselves and when no family member or friend is willing or suitable.
The Tennessean analysis also showed that Stuart billed twice — and was approved by Kennedy — for the same service multiple times. She attributed the double billings to errors that she later would fix. Overall, the analysis showed, Stuart billed her clients $1.8 million since taking office in early 2008. She has said she has a right to be reimbursed at her legal rate when she personally handles work and that she doesn’t always collect the amount she bills because some of her wards are destitute.
Kennedy, in his report on Stuart’s current cases, wrote: “In one isolated case there are two separate billings for services that are a typographical error at best or a double billing at worst for a period of one hour.”
Changes in fee approval
Kennedy told council members that Stuart would be replaced in the approximately 90 cases that are now assigned to her.
Kennedy had earlier suspended Stuart from receiving any additional cases when council members, who appoint the public guardian, raised concerns after The Tennessean’s stories. He also changed the way he approves fees in all cases, no longer approving them on the day they are submitted so that he can have more time for review. He also appointed a task force to look at ways to lower costs for conservatorships for non-legal services.
Kennedy said that while Stuart is being replaced in all her pending cases, she still will be required to file final accountings in all of those cases.
Stuart says she followed laws, court's rules
In her letter of resignation to Kennedy, Stuart cited controversy as the cause for her departure.
Stating that it was her duty “to care for the best interest of wards of your court without outside controversy,” Stuart wrote, “I hereby resign the office of Public Guardian of Davidson County Tennessee.”
Later in the letter she notes: “I have from time to time asked you for instructions, and I have followed them to the best of my ability. I have provided you with detailed affidavits of my actions, and all of my actions have been approved in orders signed by you.
“I believe that all of my actions have been in accordance with prevailing Tennessee laws and the rules of the Tennessee Supreme Court.” She also noted in the letter that she has followed the policies and procedures in Kennedy’s court.
Stuart, who was recommended by Kennedy, was voted to the post by the Metro Council unanimously on two occasions. Council members who serve on the rules committee that reviews such appointments indicated future appointees may undergo closer scrutiny.
“When the time comes to appoint we’ll have him (Kennedy) in rules and we’ll be sure to question him at that time. I think there’s going to be a lot of scrutiny of this next time,” said Councilman Anthony Davis, who is chairman of the Rules, Confirmations and Public Elections Committee.
“I think we would certainly take his recommendation. We’ll step it up on our oversight now because of what happened. But him showing the effort, it would be obvious he’s going to be more careful in who he chooses.”
'Highly questionable'
Councilman Bo Mitchell, who serves on the same committee, said he believed it was the right move for Kennedy to make Stuart’s suspension permanent.
“When the public trust is in question, I think it’s best that we go in a different direction right now,” Mitchell said. “I’m not going to judge, and I haven’t researched enough to be able to say she’s totally in the wrong, but some of the stuff I’ve seen has been highly questionable.”
Mitchell also said questions about Stuart’s job performance demonstrate that the council needs the freedom to vet such public appointees more thoroughly. The council appoints the public guardian, though the legislative body lacks the ability to remove someone from an appointed job.
The standard council practice has been to rely on the probate judge’s recommendations for the public guardian.
“We’re put in a position to appoint these people, and in the past when I have tried to ask difficult questions, you get portrayed in the media as grilling a defenseless appointee,” Mitchell said. “You’re just trying to ask questions that some point in time may come back.”
Contact Walter F. Roche Jr. at 615-259-8086 orwroche@tennessean.com.
Gov. Bill Haslam / John A. Gillis / Gannett Tennessee
Haslam approves new conservatorship law
Revisions strengthen wards' rights with added safeguards
May 21, 2013
Gov. Bill Haslam has signed into law a measure making the first major revisions in more than a decade to the state law governing the process of placing state residents under the control of a court-appointed conservator.
The new statute, which will take effect July 1, was the product of a series of hearings held across the state by the Tennessee Bar Association. It sets out for the first time uniform procedures for placing a person in a conservatorship on an emergency basis.
“The intent of this law is to clarify the process, to make sure people aren’t being taken advantage of,” said Rep. Andrew Farmer, the House sponsor of the measure.
Farmer, a Sevierville Republican, said he considered passage of the bill to be his biggest accomplishment of the recently completed session.
Under the new law, a person being placed in a conservatorship in an emergency situation must be informed of the proceedings within 48 hours and a hearing must be held within five days.
The judge also will be required to certify that absent the conservatorship, the person would be likely to suffer substantial harm.
Testimony at the bar association hearings last year, including a session in Nashville, showed the emergency process varied from courtroom to courtroom across the state. Several witnesses, including Jewell Tinnon of Nashville, said their rights and possessions had been taken away without notice or justification and they questioned the need for emergency action.
Tinnon’s story was told in a special report by the Tennessean last year. Her house, car and all of her personal possessions were stripped away while she was in a conservatorship initiated by two relatives who she said she hadn’t seen in years. Tinnon now lives in public housing.
Under the new law, a judge will be required to specify exactly what rights are being taken away and what rights the ward will retain. The law mandates that the restrictions be as limited as possible.
Under a last-minute amendment, specific provisions were added to clarify the procedure for a health care provider to follow in placing a patient in a conservatorship on a temporary basis. The change was sought by hospitals.
The procedure would be used when a health care provider determines that the patient needs to be transferred to a lower level of care but the patient lacks the capacity to make that decision.
Still other provisions in the statute spell out the duties of court-appointed attorneys known as guardian ad litems. The law makes clear that those appointed are not advocates for the proposed ward but fact-finders for the judge.
The law also establishes a priority list of those to be considered to serve as a conservator, with the highest priority going to a spouse or other family member. If the judge does not appoint a family member or a district public guardian, he or she must state the reason.
Under the new law conservators who have control of a ward’s finances will be required to file
detailed annual reports. Conservators also will be required to file periodic reports on the ward’s physical and mental condition.
detailed annual reports. Conservators also will be required to file periodic reports on the ward’s physical and mental condition.
The new law maintains a provision in the current law under which a ward has the right to petition the court at any time to have the conservatorship lifted or eased.
Walter F. Roche Jr. can be reached at 615-259-8086 orwroche@tennessean.com.
Jeanan Mills Stuart says her billing system is widely used in law offices and her double-billing instances were errors. / George Walker IV / File / The Tennessean
Davidson County Public Guardian's bills
exceed $1.8 million
he Davidson County public guardian, whose fees are under review by a local probate judge, has double-billed clients, billed more than 24 hours in a day and earned more than $270,000 in thousands of small, individual charges for tasks such as listening to a voice mail.
The Tennessean first raised questions about Jeanan Mills Stuart’s fees when it found she was charging her legal rates of $200 to $225 per hour for nonlegal tasks, such as taking her wards on shopping trips and sorting their clothes before a move into an assisted-living center.
A new data analysis by The Tennessean of all of her billings between 2008 — when she was first appointed by the Metro Council — and February 2013 shows she has turned in fee requests with mistakes, such as double-billings, and more than 24-hour days, all of which have been approved by the judge overseeing the conservator cases.
In all, Stuart has billed for more than $1.8 million in fees since January 2008, when she took on her role, according to The Tennessean’s data analysis. As public guardian, she handles the affairs of people who are found by the Davidson County probate court to be mentally or physically unable to make their own decisions. Her wards have no control or say in what she does for them. The primary oversight of her fees is Davidson County Probate Judge David Randy Kennedy, who can approve or reject them.
Lawyers and experts in legal fees say that some of Stuart’s billing practices depart from typical standards — particularly her practice of charging attorneys’ fees for nonlegal services and repeatedly billing a minimum charge no matter what service is provided.
“These things seem particularly out of bounds,” said attorney Robert Fleischer, an expert on guardianships with the Massachusetts-based Center for Public Representation.
The Tennessean analysis of her bills show Stuart has:
• Billed twice for the same services nearly a dozen times.
• Billed for more than 24 hours in a single day twice.
• Billed a tenth of an hour thousands of times for individual tasks such as retrieving an email, reviewing a bill or listening to a voice mail.
These tasks cost wards tens of thousands of dollars because Stuart — unlike many lawyers who use paralegals or clerks at a lower cost for such work — charged her full legal rate of $200 to $225 per hour.
In a series of responses to Tennessean questions, Stuart defended her billing practices, saying her system was widely used in law offices. She said the cases of double-billing occurred because she turned into the court a “preview fee affidavit” instead of a “final affidavit,” which caused the errors.
She explained that her billing for more than 24 hours in a single day was actually for work that occurred over two days. And she has said in the past that she has the right as a lawyer to bill at her legal rates for work that she personally handles.
Judge Kennedy, who is in the process of reviewing Stuart’s fee requests, issued a preliminary report to the Metro Council last month stating that he had found no discrepancies after going through about 30 of Stuart’s currently active cases. He also announced he would not assign any additional cases to Stuart until the review was complete.
His review was prompted by concerns of Metro Council members after The Tennessean published a report on Stuart’s fees, including information that showed she charged one ward more than $1,200 for taking her on a 61/2-hour shopping trip to Dillard’s and Walgreens.
She actually billed the ward twice for that a trip for a total cost of about $2,400. After The Tennessean reported the double-billing in February, Stuart said it was a mistake and said she credited the client’s account by $1,462.50, which she said was the amount actually charged twice.
Kennedy said he has instituted new procedures to allow for closer review of all lawyers’ fees. He will no longer approve fee requests on the same day they are submitted.
Though Kennedy limited his review to Stuart’s currently active cases, The Tennessean analysis covers closed and open cases. The review shows that on multiple occasions Stuart has billed her wards twice for performing the same service and all were approved by Kennedy. One client was double-billed three times.
In the case of George Vickers, for example, Stuart billed one hour at a cost of $200 for a shopping trip to Target to buy him Depend undergarments. The same one-hour trip on the same day was listed on her next billing two months later.
In the same case and in the same two fee filings, Stuart billed two times for a 21/2-hour trip on the same dayto Burns, where Vickers’ property was being auctioned. As with the Target trips, the Burns trip payments were approved. Stuart also billed Vickers twice to review a Medicare statement.
In the case of Wanda Fite, Stuart billed her to draft a motion for the sale of her property. In the next fee filing, she billed the same amount for the same task on the same day. Fite was also billed twice the same day for “meeting with (real estate agent) and sign contract.”
For yet another ward, Stuart billed for 22 hours in a single day in two 11-hour entries, totaling $2,400 altogether. The charges listed were identical — cleaning out the ward’s former residence — and they were approved by Kennedy. Stuart said she had previously discovered the double-entry and later reimbursed the ward’s account.
Stuart said that while she may have submitted a fee affidavit — a sworn statement to the court listing fees — that listed individual tasks twice, she never collected double payments because her billing system prevented it and would have automatically generated a credit.
6-minute fees add up
The new analysis also shows that a large chunk of Stuart’s fees come from billings of one-tenth of an hour at her legal hourly rate of $200 to $225 per hour. Some of the most frequent tasks for which she bills at one-tenth of an hour, or 6 minutes, is reviewing bank statements and listening to or responding to voice mails.
In her bills since 2008, she charged for 6 minutes 13,290 times, totaling more than $270,000 in fees. The charges account for about 15 percent of her total billings. Though some of the tenth of an hour entries list more than one task, most list only one.
Though Stuart said the tenth of an hour minimum charge was a common practice, experts contacted by the Tennessean disagreed.
Connie Draxler, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Public Guardian’s office, said they don’t have any minimum time charge.
“We bill for the exact amount of time spent on the case, whatever that is,” Draxler said.
James King, a California attorney who has testified as an expert witness in fee disputes, said there have been cases in which courts have challenged and reduced multiple billings for a minimum amount.
“The charge should not be for six minutes unless the task you performed actually took at least that amount of time,” King said.
He said the normal accepted practice would be for an attorney to group several tasks, such as returning several phone calls into a single six-minute block. He said there also are billing programs available under which an attorney can charge for as little as a minute at a time.
The same opinion was voiced by Fleischner, the author of several articles on guardianships, who said that while a tenth of an hour is often the minimum charge, the usual practice would be to group several tasks under each minimum charge.
“It doesn’t take six minutes to read an email or listen to a voice mail,” he said. “Lawyers are expected to observe reasonable billing judgment.”
Jerome Studer, a Chicago attorney who specializes in legal fee issues, said that if an attorney made a single phone call in a day for a client, charging the client for a tenth of an hour would be acceptable, but he said that multiple charges of a tenth of an hour in the same day would not be appropriate.
“You want to charge for the time you actually work,” he said.
The Tennessean analysis showed there were 1,989 instances where Stuart charged a tenth of an hour more than once for the same client on the same day. In the case of Dorothy Hawkins, Stuart billed 10 separate tenth of an hour charges on March 22, 2010.
King and Fleischner also were critical of Stuart’s practice of charging her full lawyer’s hourly rate for nonlegal tasks.
King said that while occasionally it may be simpler for a lawyer to just perform a small task rather than enlisting the aid of a secretary or paralegal, generally, a lawyer should not bill a full legal fee for tasks that could be performed by a paralegal or clerk.
“If someone does that (charging the full hourly rate) routinely, then that’s a problem,” King said.
Studer, the Chicago attorney, said that it was “not at all appropriate” for an attorney to charge full hourly legal rates for what are clerical type services.
“I can’t think of why a lawyer would have to go on a shopping trip,” Studer said.
'Long days' cited
In at least two cases, Stuart billed for more than 24 hours in a single day.
“I have long days at my office,” Stuart said. “It is not unusual for me to spend that kind of time when there are exigent circumstances, especially at the start of an emergency conservatorship.”
Stuart’s billings for Jan, 27, 2012, include a 28-hour entry for work related to a single ward at a Cool Springs nursing home. The entry reports that she met with a hospice worker to discuss the ward’s case, had a telephone call with the ward’s physician and waited at the nursing home for relatives of the ward to arrive.
For the same day, Stuart also billed a total of two hours of work for more than a dozen other wards.
Stuart, in a written response to questions, said that the 30 hours were actually spread over two days and that she was primarily attending to two wards, a father and his daughter, who died the next day.
“Yes, it was a long time, and I did what I did to support people who needed my help,” Stuart wrote.
Stuart also billed in excess of 24 hours in a single day on March 24, 2009, with the largest chunk, 12 hours, coming in the case of a child who suffered severe injuries at birth. But on the same day she also said she went through paperwork for another ward at his former home in a trailer park. In all, she billed for 251/2 hours on that day.
Stuart said the March 24 billing involved an emergency situation involving a child who had to be removed from the parents’ home. She said the hours were actually spread over two days.
Walker Moskop contributed to this report. Roche can be reached at wroche@tennessean.com or 259-8086.
And this goes on and on . There is a never ending of money because there's a never ending of wards There is a never ending of untimely deaths after the money is gone. We need to look into each states Elderly Laws.
I have just recently found that the Representative Elaine Schwartz is not only a Florida State Representative in the state house but she is also on the Committee for elderly law, has a elderly law practice, has a guardian business , now is a lobbyist in DC for the NAELA which is an association of attorney's who "Practice Elderly Law". Schwartz writes laws to benefit herself and her business not the wards she is entrusted to.
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