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Toxic Justice, Part 1: The South Carolina Asbestos Machine
How a dying elderly woman’s lawsuit opened a window into a court system where dead companies are resurrected — and political power shields the players pulling the strings.
9 comments
There are a small handful of these massively polluting families like the Dupont family and the Sackler family(opiods), where we should just be able to say as a society that the damage you have done through your drug dealing and pollution, prohibits you from participating any further. I don’t feel like we’re very far away from that in South Carolina.
It is interesting that your story reflects the entities on the other side of these cases are insurance companies, which make billions of dollars on a business model that relies on denying claims their customers pay them to cover. And have more than enough money and power to crush any opponent, including the vast majority of lawyers. Is that whose side you are taking? This site is really in league with the insurance industry, so I am guessing this “series” will just be focused on the plaintiff’s lawyers and how they abuse the poor little insurance industry?
First and foremost, as a physician and master of public health, I am all for exposing the harmful effects of occupational and/or environmental exposure to anything and everything and all for preventing all preventable exposures.
Next, and still as a physician and master of public health, I insist that the answer is CREATIVE science, NOT lawsuits; and that the current environment DISCOURAGES creative science.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers are NOT about preventing further injury but about promoting them to get more business. And insurance defense lawyers are not about weeding out frivolous or exaggerated claims, but about encouraging, promoting, and prolonging them to pad their legal defense fees.
As myself having suffered from the hypocrisy of ALMOST ALL South Carolina judges, prosecutors, and lawyers with whom I have come in contact, I am entitled to point out that Jean Toal’s nepotism did not begin with the asbestos racket; nor is any racket to which Jeal Toal contributes is entirely Democrat-lead or plaintiff-lead. Jean Toal has also protected prosecutor-lead rackets.
For efficiency and consistency, I paste here my comments on Terry Wooten’s knowing or unwitting assistance of his second wife’s BFF Sharon Bonner Koon’s attempted/successful? mortgage fraud through a tailor-made Jean Toal opinion curated by Rasputin of SC’s courts Daniel Edward Shearouse. I hope the readers see a long pattern.
While Strom-Thurmond-Shielding-Shedd and the triple-nepo-Wootens are on a selective-prosecution tear against two SC state government bureaucrats, and while Will Folks and Jenn Wood are on a feigned crusade for “judicial transparency,” I am entitled to renew my question about Dennis Shedd’s BFF Terry Wooten’s alliance with Jean Toal to facilitate Terry Wooten’s second wife’s (Susie Jones Wooten) scheme/success in what is known as occupancy fraud or mortgage fraud and is SO SERIOUS it caused the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to resign. And here in the U.S. it caused indictments against NY Attorney General Letitia James and efforts to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from her seat.
I make ABSOLUTELY NO COMMENT on the James and Cook cases because I do not know their facts.
But I DO know SOME of the facts on one Sharon (“Sherry”) Bonner Koon’s scheme to FALSELY pretend a house on 436 Byron Road, Columbia, SC 29209, which she had been from 2002 to 2008 renting to my mother and me had been Koon’s PRIMARY residence all along that period. Koon then sought to have the ENTIRE mortgage on that house forgiven under the federal HAMP assistance program meant EXCLUSIVELY for distressed owner-occupied residences.
The federal statute of limitations on mortgage fraud by Koon may have expired. But South Carolina has NO statute of limitations on ANY crime. I therefore DEMAND an investigation into whether Rasputin of SC Courts, Daniel Edward Shearouse, who curated the alliance between Terry Wooten and Jean Toal knew of Sherry Koon’s mortgage fraud scheme.
And I paste here, too, what I wrote under Jenn Wood’s story on Barabara Ann Mixson’s 40-year work for, and devotion to, the late Libby and Handsome Murdaugh:
Since the atrocity of Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) 2023 FALSE conviction of two murders is an extension of the great Dr. Marie Faltas’ 2009 FALSE arrests on KNOWN-FALSE harassment charges (which she, thank God, ultimately defeated WITHOUT A LAWYER after a five-day jury trial presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman), and since RAM, himself is a descendant of three generations of prosecutors, and since his RAM’s lawyers, Messers. Harpootlian and Griffin, are themselves former prosecutors who are IN TOTAL DENIAL of how they built a rotten prosecutorial system which allows, and EVEN ENCOURAGES, the use of false prosecutions for one improperly-favored party in a civil case to gain unfair advantage in the civil litigation, I remain MORE qualified AND courageous to speak against ALL people and events which built that system that now came back to bite its own builders.
They are reaping what they sowed; e.g., use of the unreliable polygraphs in federal plea agreements; even though NOTHING justifies the false conviction of two murders.
But what I always sowed was science, truth, AND love for my enemies, including the KNOWN-false witnesses against me.
So, I am entitled to paste here (perhaps RAM gets to read it if his failed lawyers allow it) my questions to FITS about the peripatetic Rasputin of SC’s courts, Daniel Edward Shearouse:
BTW, while you are on that feigned judicial-transparency kick, can you find out why FOR THE THIRD WEEK IN A ROW your SC Supreme Court has NOT posted the weekly advance sheets.
Is that related somehow to the upcoming judicial elections? Or to the Rasputin of the SC courts Daniel Edward Shearouse continuing to pull the strings behind the scenes even though a white woman is now SUPPOSEDLY the Clerk of SC’s supreme court and a woman is SUPPOSEDLY the Director of SC Court Administration?
Rasputin Shearouse SUPPOSEDLY retired as SC supreme court clerk but continued to work there for an hourly salary he pretended UNDER OATH he does not know.
Then, Rasputin Shearouse was appointed as Director of SC Court Administration WITHOUT ADVERTIZING or COMPETITIVE APPLICATION. After I pointed that out in a complaint about Kittredge’s nepotism, a woman was named Director of SC Court Administration though the same announcement said that Shearouse will stay as “Interim Director” for an indefinite period SUPPOSEDLY to break the new Director in even though Rasputin Shearouse has had no REAL FORMAL experience himself directing SC court administration.
And while you are at it, can you (or will you) FOIA Shearouse’s payments from POSSIBLE double or even triple office holding? Or is Rasputin of SC’s courts pulling YOUR strings, too? After all, your outlet has been sued and is now being sued my none other than Mark (“The Tiger”) Tinsley.
We shall, God willing, see.
Your a physician?
LakeTahoeZ, yes, I am.
That is how, among other things, I was the first (and so far only) one to point out that Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) did NOT kill Paul or Maggie because (among other things) the Prosecution’s CLAIMED time of deaths is WRONG.
I know it because the food in the victims’ stomachs (as observed and measured by the pathologist who performed the autopsies) was too digested and too little for the deaths to have occurred ONLY 22 MINUTES after the victims’ last, large, and relatively fatty, meal.
We know the last meal time with precision because we know the time of Maggie’s arrival back to Moselle from her cell phone records AND car records; and we know that her phone LOCKED during dinner time from 8:00 to 8:30 pm on 6 June 2021.
As in the asbestos cases, SCIENCE, not stupid and greedy lawyers, can prevent disease, improve health, and establish justice.
Science, not stupid legal rules of evidence, can establish the exact (or best estimate of the) time of death.
And SCIENCE, not a litigation machine, can innovate safer and more efficient ways to produce whatever asbestos was/is used for.
BTW, science also knows that breast-feeding is the best preventer of breast cancer. But some, if not most, breast cancer profiteers prefer to enrich themselves with surgeries and charity organizations after the calamity rather than prevent the disease in the first place.
Yes, I am a physician who graduated WITH HONORS from one of the best medical schools and the world then passed many very rigorous equivalency and licensing examinations.
Yes, I am a physician and this is how good physicians should think.
Peace!
I do not know why my reply does not appear; but here it is again:
LakeTahoeZ, yes, I am.
That is how, among other things, I was the first (and so far only) one to point out that Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) did NOT kill Paul or Maggie because (among other things) the Prosecution’s CLAIMED time of deaths is WRONG.
I know it because the food in the victims’ stomachs (as observed and measured by the pathologist who performed the autopsies) was too digested and too little for the deaths to have occurred ONLY 22 MINUTES after the victims’ last, large, and relatively fatty, meal.
We know the last meal time with precision because we know the time of Maggie’s arrival back to Moselle from her cell phone records AND car records; and we know that her phone LOCKED during dinner time from 8:00 to 8:30 pm on 6 June 2021.
As in the asbestos cases, SCIENCE, not stupid and greedy lawyers, can prevent disease, improve health, and establish justice.
Science, not stupid legal rules of evidence, can establish the exact (or best estimate of the) time of death.
And SCIENCE, not a litigation machine, can innovate safer and more efficient ways to produce whatever asbestos was/is used for.
BTW, science also knows that breast-feeding is the best preventer of breast cancer. But some, if not most, breast cancer profiteers prefer to enrich themselves with surgeries and charity organizations after the calamity rather than prevent the disease in the first place.
Yes, I am a physician who graduated WITH HONORS from one of the best medical schools and the world then passed many very rigorous equivalency and licensing examinations.
Yes, I am a physician and this is how good physicians should think.
Peace!
Because it is relevant here, too, God willing and FITS permitting, I post here, too, my response to having been unfairly accused of bragging on myself for having, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, and in the court of none other than Judge Clifton Newman, done for myself what Alex-Murdaugh’s four-lawyer-plus-paralegals defense team COMBINED could not do: prevent a jury from returning a wrongful conviction:
But telling the truth is not bragging; it is teaching.
Alex’s defense team, and all South Carolina’s criminal defense lawyers for that matter, could learn from me how to defend an ACTUALLY-innocent, not MERELY constitutionally-PRESUMED-innocent, criminal defendants.
Most, if not all, South Carolina’s criminal defense lawyers know mainly, if not only, how to do one thing well: plea bargain. Even if their client is actually innocent of the charged crime, they force him/her to plead guilty to a lesser crime and get the matter over with while helping the prosecutor save face and be amenable to plea bargain with the next client.
That is THE REALITY of how South Carolina’s criminal “justice” system works. Or worked until the great Dr. Marie Faltas was FALSELY accused and refused to knuckle under.
Don’t take my word for it, take the record.
Dick Harpootlian learned from me and is now saying, “Don’t read the script, read the transcript,” in variation on my long-and-often stated plea: “Don’t take my word, take the record.”
I now modify that to “Take the record, then take my word on my interpretation of that record.”
BTW, note how my writing avoids confusing violations of the grammatical rule of the last antecedent. One more thing y’all can learn from me.
It is difficult but not impossible to “put the toothpaste back in the tube.” But it is impossible to re-blow a soap (or even balloon) bubble once it is burst.
And a skill defense lawyers should learn from me is how to burst bubbles of falsehood.
The COMPLETE transcripts (which I received in “bits and pieces”) of my 22-26 February 2010 Richland County General Sessions jury trial is available for free on Richland County’s Public Index and SC’s Judicial Branch’s website’s C-Track.
The photos of my false accusers harassing ME while I FALSELY got accused of harassing them are available through the federal courts’ PACER at 10 cents/page but possibly free for certain researchers.
The cold-bloodedness of Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (“Weiss”) knowing that I was THE VICTIM of harassment and even rape threats by one Corey/Cory Lamont Curry, whom Hatchet-for-Hire Heather had HERSELF earlier convicted of PWID-crack cocaine but later, in my trial, LIED to Judge Clifton Newman about that Curry’s criminal record, but FALSELY portraying ME as harassing that Curry, is not an exception, it is THE USUAL PRACTICE of prosecutors.
It is not about who is the REAL perpetrator and who is the REAL victim. It is about where the prosecutor’s financial interests are. Which law firm would hire that prosecutor or that judge after (s)he retires from public “service”?
Which criminal defendant would later hire that retired prosecutor or judge if (s)he opens his/her private practice?
THAT is how prosecutorial decisions, clothed with “immunity,” are really made.
Since I owned, and will never own, a law firm, and since I am too God-and-self-reliant to believe in hired lawyers, no one, not one defense lawyer, not one “ethical” prosecutor, not one judge, and not one politician, ever had or has any financial interest in holding Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (“Weiss”) accountable for maliciously and falsely prosecuting me.
That is why I have no problem believing that the gang of prosecutors who procured Alex Murdaugh’s false conviction were knowingly doing it for their own present and/or financial advantage, not for justice.
Once you develop a taste and thrill of lying and seeing your lies believed, you lose all skills and incentives at truth finding.
Take the record of how Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (“Weiss”) continued to maliciously prosecute me; then take my interpretation of why she is the rule, not the exception, although she is an extreme example of the rule.
Then take this interpretation of mine of God’s admonition that the sins of the fathers are called for answers by the offspring to the third generation and the fourth generation: the rotten system you build/tolerate today and let victimize ME today will victimize your third generation and fourth generation tomorrow.
Alex Murdaugh’s forefathers built a system mixing civil litigation with criminal process. It came back to bite Alex.
But two wrongs do not make a right.
Only right makes right.
The same Jean Toal, “the Toxic Justice” of this article denied Alex Murdaugh’s motion for a new trial due to jury tampering and had previously barred ME from defending myself pro se in criminal cases knowing it to be unconstitutional AND without factual foundation given the trial judges’, including most relevantly Judge Clifton Newman’s TRANSCRIBED compliments of BOTH my courtroom conduct (“most pleasant and gracious”) and substantive arguments (“not frivolous at all”).
So, I deserve to post here what I did on other Alex Murdaugh stories:
Paul and Maggie were killed EXACTLY one week after FITSNews tightened its free-articles policy to generate more subscriptions to pay the salaries of Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell, who had just been hired at FITS.
In her book, Mandy (who had conveniently arranged for herself and her then-boyfriend-ordered-to-be-engaged-to-Mandy David Moses to be vacationing offshore) tells of David pulling out the podcasting equipment (which, for some undisclosed reason, Mandy and David had taken with them on their “vacation”) and starting broadcasting THE MINUTE Liz called from the Low Country with news of Paul and Maggie’s deaths.
Coincidences you think?
Then, for clincher, read this comment of mine on Jenn Wood’s most recent Week-in-Review interview:
Jenn Wood, dear, “phenomenal acting” or not, HULU’s purpose is clear: consolidate Alex Murdaugh’s wrongful convictions by falsification or insinuation.
HULU reversed the order of Gloria Satterfield’s and Mallory Beach’s lives ending to INSINUATE that Alex caused Gloria to be pushed off the stairs and die so he could get a settlement out of it and misdirect it to paying for the boat crash case.
No one would ask how Alex could possibly have known that Gloria’ fall from a small height would be fatal. Instead, everyone would be basking in the glory of their non-existent intelligence in making the connection.
Can there be any other explanation for reversing the order of events?
Another connection is that a Conner parent was a court reporter at the same time Becky “Boo” Hill was one; and the two women were, and continued to be close friends.
Whether Ms. Connor bailed out on Ms. Hill after the latter failed from grace, I do not know. But I do know that I can have no sympathy or respect for anyone who frames the innocent for money.
If Alex is not the real killer of Paul or Maggie, and every SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVE analysis says he CANNOT possibly be, then Alex needs to be released IMMEDIATELY. He has already suffered enough.
Accuracy matters.
So, I paste here one of my comments on FITS’ last week, not yesterday’s, Week-in-Review:
Will Folks, at 5:54, can’t you ever outgrow your tendency to tell untruth even as you claim heroics in pursuing the actual facts and going where they take you?
Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) NEVER claimed “he was 20 miles away” at 8:44 pm on 7 June 2021.
What RAM always TRUTHFULLY said was that SOME TIME after dinner he went to see his mother at Almeida.
Only in the fictional media is RAM ever portrayed as saying, “I never went to the kennels.”
He does NOT say that phrase in ANY of the three video-taped interviews with law enforcement.
Half-truths ARE lies. So, in emphasizing that RAM initially lied by omitting the brief kennels visit, PLEASE don’t commit the lie of FALSELY claiming that RAM ever pretended to have been at Almeida at 8:44 pm.
Again, because I explained n times that the contents of Paul’s and Maggie’s stomachs at autopsy rule out the victims’ lives having ended as early as ONLY 22 minutes after their large, and relatively fatty, last meal, that 8:44 pm video has absolutely NO INCULPATORY value.
Otherwise, please keep pursuing the whole truth and tell it whole and pure.