Update: Indictments in Roberts sex/extortion case

We reported June 13, 2004:

According to a story in the San Antonio Express-News, husband-and-wife legal partners Ted H. and Mary Schorlemer Roberts received money in a curious sequence of events. Mary, claiming to seek “no strings” discreet encounters, would seduce men over an Internet dating service. Ted would then write the men (in legal documents sometimes typed by Mary) and notify them that he planned to seek intrusive and public civil discovery to investigate whether the affair brought forward potential causes of action that were flimsy at best; the men would pay tens of thousands of dollars for a release and confidentiality agreement.

The Roberts couple’s bankruptcy trustee has since sued the Express-News over the story, on the theory that it “invaded their privacy, inflicted emotional distress and drove them into bankruptcy.” But a Texas grand jury has voted to indict the two on three charges of “theft” (which, in Texas, encompasses extortion); the FBI decided that federal charges weren’t possible. The Roberts couple’s attorney predicts they’ll be exonerated. “You can rest assured that I believe that lawyers are held to the same standards as everyone else in the community,” Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed said. “The law doesn’t carve out the word ‘lawyer'” for special protection.” (Maro Robbins and Joseph S. Stroud, “Pair facing extortion indictment”, San Antonio Express-News, Sep. 1). The story does not detail what happened to the Roberts’ former partner, Robert V. West III, who originally brought the allegations to light; in return, the Roberts sued him and the Texas bar chose to investigate West rather than the Roberts.

The old Curmudgeonly Clerk weblog explored the legal legitimacy of the underlying Roberts lawsuits back in 2004.

In the original story, the newspaper asked Texas law professor and legal ethics specialist John Dzienkowski if legal ethics prohibited the Roberts’ tactics. “In the spectrum of Rambo litigation, and in the spectrum of trying to push people a little bit, just sending that piece of paper is probably on the mild side,” said Dzienkowski. “That’s why ethically I don’t really see a problem with it.” But who says reform of the legal profession is needed?

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