[StBernard] Ethics charges filed against St. Bernard chief deputy clerk

[Westley Annis]

Ethics charges filed against St. Bernard chief deputy clerk
MARSHA SHULER
mshuler at theadvocate.com
April 18, 2014
0 COMMENTS
Former St. Bernard Parish Chief Deputy Clerk of Court Lena Nunez stands
accused of violating state ethics law by allegedly allowing her brother, a
lawyer, to postpone paying more than $200,000 in court filing fees.

Nunez also "participated in the shredding and destruction of the billing
records regarding her brother Sidney Torres' non-payment of advanced filing
costs," according to the charging document filed by the Louisiana Board of
Ethics.

The Ethics Board accused Nunez of violating the law banning public servants
from participating in transactions that involve their governmental entity in
which any member of their immediate family has a substantial economic
interest.

The board said Nunez participated in allowing Chalmette attorney Sidney
Torres III to file 581 lawsuits without requiring him to pay $174,300 in
advanced court costs at the time of filing. During the same time period, the
Ethics Board said, Nunez participated in not charging the legally required
fees on 23 of the 581 lawsuits filed by her brother. The unpaid fees totaled
$39,897.

The ethics charges relate to findings in a December 2012 legislative
auditor's investigative report. Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera conducted
an audit after receiving an allegation of potential wrongdoing from the
Metropolitan Crime Commission.

Efforts on Friday to reach Nunez's attorney, Freeman R. Mathews, were
unsuccessful. But attorneys for Nunez and Torres previously denied the
allegations.

Mathews claimed the audit was "riddled with misunderstandings,
misapprehensions, faulty presumptions, improperly skewed statistics and
conclusions" not supported by facts.

Torres' attorney, Leonard Levenson, said at the time that his client
received no special treatment and was not relieved of any financial
obligations.

The legislative audit claimed Torres owed $174,300. It said the clerk did
not pay all the advance court costs associated with lawsuit filings between
June 2009 and May 2011.

Torres paid $99,566 of the questioned filing fees in October 2011.

Nunez's mother, Lena Torres, lost a bid for re-election as clerk of court
that fall. The allegations of preferential treatment surfaced during the
election campaign.

Lena Nunez was employed with the St. Bernard clerk's office for more than 40
years. She left the office in 2012 when her mother was not re-elected. She
was chief deputy clerk from 1998 until 2012. In that capacity, she
supervised employees of the clerk's office's Civil Department.

The Ethics Board sent the charges to the Ethics Adjudicatory Board with a
request for it to conduct a hearing.

The Ethics Board voted to issue the charges in a closed-door session March
20. The allegations just became public when they were posted on the board's
website.