Lawyers pay price for cruel hoaxes

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Lawyers pay price for cruel hoaxes

Thursday, August 2, 2001

By CANDY HATCHER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

The only thing more despicable than preying on grieving relatives after a tragedy is doing it over and over again.

Two Florida lawyers, whose paternity hoaxes last year cost families of four Alaska Airlines crash victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebut, finally will have to pay for a smidgen of the damage they inflicted.

In court-ordered mediation last week, Edgar Miller and David Russell of Coral Gables, Fla., agreed to pay a total of $225,000. Seattle lawyer Harold Fardal, who helped file court papers in two of the cases, will split the costs with the Florida firm.

The settlement won't cover even half the expenses of the families in fighting two of the bogus claims and attempting to hold the lawyers responsible.

But it's one step toward accountability for lawyers who alleged that four passengers on Flight 261 -- two from San Francisco and two from the Seattle area -- had secretly fathered six children in Guatemala who now were the sole heirs to their estates.

They filed claims against the airlines. They filed claims against the estates. Miller, by his own admission, has done that as many as 100 times before, mostly in Central and South America.

Imagine the coincidence: Four American men, none of whom had ever met, were alleged to have had illicit affairs in Guatemala that produced heirs -- and then died in the same plane crash with all their known children.

But how do you prove a negative?

Last summer, the parents, siblings and estate executors of Terry Ryan, a beloved Redmond businessman, and David Clemetson, a respected Seattle doctor, hired lawyers and a private investigator. They paid for a trip to Mexico to retrace the last steps of their loved ones. They sent people to Guatemala to interview the alleged daughters and their caretakers.

The lawyers had provided the families with a photograph of three Guatemalan children together -- one alleged to be a Clemetson and another a Ryan. The lawyers provided birth certificates and detailed stories about how the girls' mothers had died.

But an investigator and a court-appointed guardian found that the birth records were forged. They found that the alleged grandmothers couldn't keep the girls' names straight, couldn't say where their own daughters were born or how they died, couldn't remember their own addresses and had no knowledge of the details alleged in the inheritance claims.

In February, DNA tests proved the girls weren't related to the men. But it has taken six more months -- and $100,000 more from the Ryans alone -- to end this travesty.

Jay Ryan, Terry's brother, said his family was naīve to believe they would recover all their expenses, and naīve to think criminal charges would be brought against the lawyers.

"We faced the reality of the justice system, the cost of the justice system," he said.

"For the attorneys, it's been about money. ... They thought they'd get in and get out and get the money quick."

Helen Clemetson, David's 80-year-old mother, asked the lawyers to respond to 12 questions about lawyer ethics and how the fraudulent claims came to be.

"Is a lawyer allowed to represent a client he has had no contact with?"

"Are lawyers allowed to make a claim against an estate and an airline without checking on the truth of the claim?"

And, she wondered, who paid eight people to lie?

All good questions. She got no answers.

She also asked for a handwritten apology from the lawyers. Fardal, she said, cried and apologized in person. Fardal "very much regrets the anguish he caused," his attorney, David Allen, said yesterday. "He made a mistake getting involved in this. He wanted to pay a fair share of the expenses. ... He never acted with malice. He took a case believing there might be validity and wanting to have the DNA to verify. He was fooled along with a lot of other people."

Judge Bruce Hilyer called Miller "the mastermind" behind the scheme. Miller, he said, has apparently been involved in many more aviation crash cases "even though he is not really an aviation crash attorney." Many were settled "strictly on the evidence of birth records."

And, the judge said, Miller "repeatedly represented to Mr. Fardal that he had a compelling piece of evidence which was a photograph of Dr. Clemetson with his alleged illegitimate child."

Apparently, these three brokenhearted families -- the Ryans and two branches of the Clemetsons -- were the first to question Miller's fraudulent claims, the first with the courage, strength and money to stand up and fight.

The next step is filing a complaint with the Florida Bar. "I want to stop them from doing it again," Helen Clemetson said. "And not just them, but other lawyers."

When they abuse their power as egregiously as they have here, she said, they forfeit the right to practice.

Case closed.

P-I columnist Candy Hatcher can be reached at 206-448-8320 or candyhatcher@seattlepi.com