Ex-wife of NFL star sues lawyer for malpractice over $200 misdemeanor conviction
The ex-wife of former football great Kenny Stabler has filed a malpractice suit against the lawyer who represented her in a misdemeanor case over a restroom incident in an Alabama courthouse.
Rose Burch Stabler was arrested in 2011 after a judge at the Baldwin County Courthouse in Bay Minette accused her of injecting a drug. Drug tests were negative, and she had no marks on her arms or drugs in her purse. However, she was charged and convicted of disorderly conduct for causing a disturbance in the restroom and fined $200, the Birmingham News recounts.
At issue in the Mobile County Circuit Court malpractice suit she filed this week is whether attorney Jeff Deen should have fought to recuse then-Baldwin County Circuit Judge Charles Partin from hearing the case. He was the judge who had presided in the Stablers’ divorce case, which continued from 2002 to 2009 and was on appeal at the time of the misdemeanor trial. Stabler’s lawyer in the malpractice case, Jerry Blevins, contends that Partin was not properly appointed to hear the criminal case, the newspaper reports.
Deen said he did nothing wrong and simply tried the case in front of the judge assigned to hear it. He called the malpractice suit “much ado about nothing” and said Stabler is “a litigious person.”
She previously sued her divorce lawyer, Mark Ryan, for failing to protect her from an IRS lien on the Stablers’ former home. That suit was dismissed in 2009 as untimely filed.
She is currently seeking more than $50,000 in damages.
“There is absolutely no way to reopen that criminal case,” Blevins told the News. “She’s got a conviction that’s hanging over her for the rest of her life.”
See also:
Sports Illustrated: “The legend of Kenny Stabler”
