Good for them, and good in general.
Still a crook any way you look
A Travis County district court judge on Friday awarded $6.6 million to four former senior aides to Attorney General Ken Paxton who said they were improperly fired after reporting Paxton to the FBI.
Judge Catherine Mauzy stated in her judgment that the plaintiffs — Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar — had proven by a “preponderance of the evidence” that Paxton’s office had violated the Texas Whistleblower Act. Each of the four were awarded between $1.1 and $2.1 million for wages lost, compensation for emotional pain, attorney’s fees and various other costs as a result of the trial.
The judgment also said Paxton’s office did not dispute any issue of fact in the case, which stopped the Attorney General’s office from further contesting their liability. Tom Nesbitt, the attorney for Brickman and Maxwell, said in a statement that Paxton “admitted” to breaking the law to avoid being questioned under oath.
“It should shock all Texans that their chief law enforcement officer, Ken Paxton, admitted to violating the law, but that is exactly what happened in this case,” Nesbitt said in the statement.
In a statement to the Tribune from his office, Paxton called the ruling “a ridiculous judgment that is not based on the facts or the law” and pointed blame at former Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who led the Texas House effort to impeach him in 2023. “We will appeal this bogus ruling as we continue to clean up Dade Phelan’s mess,” Paxton said in the statement.
The judgment also ordered that the plaintiffs are entitled to additional attorney’s fees if they successfully defend or prosecute appeals, including up to $20,000 per plaintiff for various stages of review at the Supreme Court of Texas.
Late Friday, Brickman criticized Paxton’s intent to appeal the judgment in a post on X, calling the attorney general “ lawless and shameless” and claiming the judgment came because Paxton was avoiding a deposition.
“Paxton now wants to appeal? He literally already admitted he broke the law to @SupremeCourt_TX and the Travis County District Court — all to stop his own deposition,” Brickman wrote.
See here for the previous update. It took longer for the judgment to be announced than we had been led to believe, but whatever. There’s obviously a ton of backstory to all this, but remember that the reason we were still fighting it out over this settlement was because the original one, for $3.3 million, wasn’t approved by the Lege to be paid for in a separate appropriation because Ken Paxton refused to answer any questions about what happened. His refusal led to the House committee doing their own investigation, which in turn led to the impeachment and all of that mishegoss. Part of that was Paxton declaring that he would no longer contest any of the allegations made against him, again to avoid having to answer questions about the whole affair (and yes, I use that word deliberately), this time in a deposition.
The bottom line is that Paxton on the one hand says “fine, I’ll cop to whatever you guys say” and on the other hand claims they’re lying, all because he does not want to answer any questions about what happened. He’s desperate to avoid answering questions. Whatever happens, from this point forward, this fact should be relentlessly brought up and thrown in his face. Whatever we Democrats can do to get these whistleblowers out there in public saying what a dirtbag sleazeball Ken Paxton is, we have to do it. This is the closest thing to any accountability for his behavior he has faced. We have to ride it all the way.
DIFFERENT TAKE
I get it. Everybody loves Raymond and everybody here hates Ken Paxton. Except perhaps some lurkers and scavengers for enemy intelligence.
But consider this:
This is a whistleblower case that can only be brought against the employing governmental unit. So, Paxton is not being held accountable individually even though he headed and keeps heading that unit. Nor is he personally on the hook or any damages. Suppose Eva Guzman had won the primary and been elected AG. The WBA case would have continued against what would then have been HER office: The same Office of the Attorney General. She would not even have to be substituted as a party because the suit is against the Office as public employer, rather than the incumbent office holder. The WBA is one of the statutory exceptions to sovereign and governmental immunity. Otherwise, it would be hard for an employee to sue at all, except for discrimination perhaps.
As for the size of the damages award, IMO, it’s excessive. It just goes to show that we are not all equal: $1.1 and $2.1 million for wages lost, compensation for emotional pain. Also, they were no doubt salaried, so … wages?
More importantly and as a general rule, when you get fired and sue for wrongful termination, you have to mitigate your damages in the interim, i.e. find another job, or at least try. After all, you have a lot of free time on your hands. The ex-Paxton aides here are all high-octane attorneys, much higher in the pecking order than an ordinary assistant AG handling a slew of child support cases or open records requests. How are they not employable elsewhere or in other capacities? How can they not set up shop for themselves? Appellate justices, whether they choose to resign, or are voted out by shifting partisan swing, find new work in prominent law firms. Sometimes they resign in order to make more money in the private sector. To wit: Former SCOTX Justice Brister, who is now back as chief of the newly-inaugurated 15th COA, having completed the paternal mission of paying for his daughters college education. He can now afford to work for the state again.
And as for the emotional damages, IMO, it’s laughable. These guys were in the misery-infliction business, and if they can dish it out on day-in day-out, they surely can handle a litigation-adjacent stress in their own dispute with their former boss. Not to mention that they command massive sympathy even accross the partisan divide. Kuff even.
Another point: The AG isn’t the chief law enforcement officer in Texas. He doesn’t control the public prosecutors (DAs) around the state, not to mention the myriad local police departments. The AG is the state’s chief lawyer and he isn’t involved in much criminal law enforcement at all. Much rather, he serves the lawyer-in-chief for the State of Texas, givinng legal advice, with additional responsibilities assigned by the Lege. Beyond giving nonjudicial legal opinions and representing the State of Texas in litigation, the OAG does enforce laws, but it’s for the most part civil enforcement.
Volumewise, the business of the OAG for the most part is to extract child support, collect money owed to the State (debt and penalty collection), and to screw people who have been wronged by state entities and agents. Toward the letter end the AG and his army of AAGs regularly invoke sovereign immunity (the King can do no wrong), governmental entity, official immunity, qualified immunity, and so on. And if that were not enough, the SCOTX has recently bestowed immunity to prosecution by the Commission for Lawyer Discipline upon them. So, this Whistleblower case by high-level ex-employees of the OAG and the resultant judgment is a rare exception (though it predates the immunity grant in Webster v. CFLD by a few years).
My prediction is that this judgment will be overturned on appeal on some ground other than the merits like: Sovereign immunity (to suit, as distinguished from immuity to liabiity) wasn’t really waived under the particular circumstances. Or: to allow a whistlblower claim of such nature undermines the authority and effectiveness of the Attorney General, a constitutional officer of the State, and therefore violates the separation of powers regardless of what the WBA says.
I hope I am wrong.
Note, however, that the SCOTX has already ruled against the plaintiffs previously:
In re Office of the Attorney General, Relator, No. 24-0073 (Tex Nov. 24, 2024).
You can read that here:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4139977931588541991&hl=en&as_sdt=6,44