Metro Ruling in Estate Case Being Appealed

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A notice of appeal has been filed in a suit seeking to force Metro government to repay the estate of a man whose assets were depleted by more than $500,000 through the admitted theft of a court appointed attorney.
The notice of appeal by Paul Gontarek was filed Friday in Davidson Circuit Court.
The appeal will challenge a ruling by Senior Judge Ben H. Cantrell who threw out the suit concluding that it was filed after the one year statute of limitations had expired. The suit sought to recover $515,907.19 from Metro government.
The suit is one of two stemming from actions by now jailed attorney John E. Clemmons, the 69-year-old disbarred Nashville lawyer now serving an 18 year prison sentence after admitting stealing over $1 million from estates and conservatorships he had been assigned to oversee.
In the Sept. 19 decision Cantrell concluded that the suit was filed well beyond the statute of limitations.
Gontarek and Paul Mason had argued that the one-year limit only applied to wrongful death suits filed against government agencies.
Cantrell, however, citing a state Supreme Court ruling, concluded that the limit was much broader and applied to the claims in the suit filed in behalf of the estate of William Link.
The suit had charged that the thefts from the estate would never have occurred if the Davidson Probate Court staff had done their jobs and enforced a requirement that Clemmons file an annual report detailing all transactions involving the estate assets. Clemmons was appointed the estate administrator in 2003 and filed a single accounting in 2004.
A second parallel case is still pending before Cantrell and it involves the conservatorship of Donald Griggs, which Clemmons also was appointed to oversee.
Clemmons admitted to stealing $157,050 from Griggs' assets.
Gontarek also sought to recover some of the stolen money from the insurance company that provided malpractice coverage for Clemmons. That claim, however, was short circuited by a recent federal court ruling.
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