Rocky Mount Mayor Holland Perdue is facing legal trouble over his day job as an attorney.
Perdue’s onetime opposing counsel in a contested will has filed a request for sanctions against him. The claim: Perdue filed and signed off on manipulated information in Franklin County Circuit Court after missing a legal deadline.
The case against Perdue remained on the court’s docket this week, with no hearing date set.
Lindsey Coley, who represents the estate of Selby Gregorie “Greg” Venning III, has asked a judge to award the estate attorney’s fees “incurred as a direct result of the false misrepresentations and inaccurate statements” in Perdue’s pleadings on behalf of his former client, Valerie Venning.
Judge William Broadhurst last week dismissed Valerie Venning’s claims against her deceased husband’s estate, due to the missed deadline, as first reported in The Roanoke Times. Broadhurst was designated to hear the case when Franklin County Circuit Judge Timothy Allen recused himself, due to the possibility that the county’s circuit court clerk would testify in a sanctions hearing against Perdue.
Broadhurst had previously approved new counsel for Valerie Venning. In his March 18 order approving the substitution, Broadhurst wrote that the change does not relieve Perdue “from any responsibility or obligation” related to Coley’s motion for sanctions.
Greg Venning, a real estate developer at Smith Mountain Lake, died Jan. 4, 2024, at 72, according to an online obituary. Court documents show that Valerie Venning, who was not named as an heir in his will, filed on Feb. 16, 2024, to nullify a prenuptial agreement that included provisions for her upon his death.
Through Perdue, Valerie Venning filed a written claim the next month at the courthouse in Rocky Mount, claiming a share of the estate. That set up a six-month deadline, to Aug. 21, 2024, for her to file a follow-up document to determine the financial amount in her claim against the estate.
But the follow-up wasn’t filed until Sept. 23. Coley requested in October that the court dismiss the case. She alleged that Venning’s response to that motion said that Perdue filed the claim on Aug. 20 with a “copy of the screenshot” showing that date, which would have been within the required timeframe.
Later documents that Perdue filed concede that the follow-up claim was submitted on Sept. 23.
Venning and Perdue knew the information to be false but still filed it with the court, Coley wrote in her motion for sanctions. Perdue on Sept. 20, 2024, “directly asked” the court clerk to “backdate the filing” of the follow-up document to Aug. 20. On Sept. 23, he hand-delivered the document to the clerk’s office, according to Coley’s filing.
The “incorrect” date appeared on the court’s online docket, which was later corrected to “reflect the actual filing date,” Coley wrote.
She argued that she has spent billable hours on her response to the false date claim “and to investigate how the online docket for the Court could previously show an incorrect filing date, but now show the correct filing date.”
Between February and August last year, the estate offered Valerie Venning a settlement that included about $89,000 and would have allowed her to live in their house until it was sold. Perdue claimed that Coley was not responsive to requests he made for more information about the estate.
Coley countered in court documents that the June 6, 2024, settlement proposal was to be withdrawn about a week later, but Coley did not receive a response until July 10, in a letter that stated Valerie Venning believed her claim was worth about $1.3 million.
No communication between the lawyers supports a claim that the estate “obstructed” Venning’s ability to file on time, Coley wrote.
Roanoke-based Michael Whitlow, the recently appointed attorney for Venning, did not reply to a voice message on Thursday, asking if he planned to appeal Broadhurst’s decision to dismiss her claims. Messages left with assistants for Coley, Perdue and Perdue’s attorney, John Lichtenstein, were not returned by deadline Thursday.
Comments are closed.