@SLABBEDblog youtube.com/watch?v=CejaCa…—
the Pun (@Editilla) February 01, 2012

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Update:
SouthCoast Today is reporting the award could be record-breaking. Slabbed stands by all its reporting on Trout Point Lodge and the connections of its owners to the widening scandal in Jefferson Parish.

Update:
The girls claim the damages are $425,000 and they are coming here to collect.

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In the midst of a widening probe surrounding the roiling fraud scandal involving top players in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, attorney Roy D’Aquila has died in New Orleans, of an apparent heart attack. D’Aquila was the law partner of Aaron Broussard, currently the key figure in the federal investigation, which has resulted in 33-count indictments against Broussard, his ex-wife Karen Parker-Broussard and parish attorney Tom Wilkinson. Broussard, Parker-Broussard and A’Quila have been owners of property and property management firms based in the Trout Point development in East Kempt, adjacent to a popular luxury lodge in the area.

D’Aquila was a fifty per-cent partner in Kempt Wilderness Lodge Services, with a business address at 7 Trout Point Road, adjacent to the Tusket River.

Read more at The SouthCoast Today.

Roy M. D’Aquila died peacefully at his home on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at the age of 57. He was born in New Orleans, LA on April 26, 1954 to his late father Vincent Anthony D’Aquila and his mother Antoinette D’Aquila.

Read more at NOLA.com.

Louisiana Insurance Commish Jim Donelon

How sad that an insurer set up via taxpayer fiat is so against the policyholders it was created to serve.  I’ll add that based upon the last legislative auditor report such a move tells me the Citizens is insolvent. I wonder if they are still running quickbooks? What a joke they are!

And to think just 3 years ago the lit and hallucinating buffoons on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board were praising Jimbo the Clown and Louisiana Citizens Insurance.

File this one under sold out.

Update:

It did not take the Supreme Court long to bitchslap Jimbo down and make no mistake folks this is all Jimbo the Clown. Even worse, he claims to have more ideas to make this mess worse.  Whadda Clown!

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Today when I go to NOLA I am treated like a rock star.  While I certainly appreciate the showing of gratitude I also am struck by the fact I am no different from anyone else. Yeah, I can bash pretty good but if Katrina taught us anything it was when the chips were down the people of the Gulf South always rose to the occasion.  I am reminded of that today. If memory serves today’s song has appeared  just once in the 4,423 posts and 22,300 comments prior to this one and includes one of our very early taglines that still applies today. Enjoy.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ~ Margaret Mead

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For the third-act and denouement of this dramatic courtroom episode, during the discussions of financial damage awards and level of injunctions sought, Hood seemed more a kindly aunt than a stern justice, as she appeared to be coaching the pair in their demands on the court, which they uncharacteristically seemed muddled and confused about.

When the three appeared to have reached agreement about what was being asked of the court, the session abruptly ended, with Hood inviting the pair back to court the following day to hear her decision.

The entire article at SouthCoast Today is a must read.

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I would like to set the record straight about defamatory comments made by Perret and Leary in the court room, on their Trout Point Lodge blog and other public documents and arenas. I have never operated as an “informant” for Slabbed or any other person, entity, group or business. I do not publish stories from Slabbed, but produce stories based on a variety of sources and, in many circumstances, based upon hours of meticulous research.

I have never acted in collusion or concert with Slabbed or any other publication or publisher. Sharing sources, leads and story ideas is a common practice in the news business and I have no intention of ceasing this age-old practice among colleagues.

Further, my writings about Trout Point Lodge are in no way connected to an affiliation with a former employee of the Lodge. That the pair chose to defame her on their blog and again in court is something which she will have to take up with them.

I have never intentionally printed false or misleading or defamatory material about the Lodge or its owners and have removed any such materials immediately when being advised of any oversight in that regard.

I was – and remain – grossly offended when recently contacted by Mr. Perret requesting that I turn over to him all email correspondence between me and the Slabbed publisher so, according to him, he “could use them in the damages proceedings.” This is a direct intimidation and an a priori invasion of my rights as a journalist.

I admit to being a reader of the Slabbed blog and appreciate that some of its readers also find insight and value in my publishing about the Nova Scotia connection to New Orleans politics.

My news site is not mainstream, but has a loyal readership among citizens here in Southwest Nova Scotia and among the politicos and news makers in Halifax. I have written about major and minor scandals for more than seven years, the results of which have been the firing of corrupt officials and various investigations by the Ombudsman’s office, the RCMP and the provincial government. I am not polite, but am generally on point.

I am hoping that these continued smears and innuendo by Perret and Leary do not dissuade readers – Slabbed nation or not – from appreciating the productive and necessary journalism on my news site – and others like it – and from visiting often.

One of the residual – or, in some cases, primary – effects of this serial defamatory action by Leary, Perret and Trout Point Lodge, and perhaps part of their strategy, is to dissuade further coverage of their actions and notoriety. My cursory reading of the statutes suggest this will not sit well with any U.S. justices who might hear any cases to which they are a party under the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act and other U.S. laws which will prevail in their attempts to have a Canadian judgment enforced

I will be contacting my attorney today regarding the appropriate action here vis-à-vis these sinister, snide and dangerous innuendo and smears. Meanwhile, I appreciate your indulgence.

Timothy Gillespie
Editor/Publisher
SouthCoastToday.ca

I again wish to express the condolences of the entire Slabbed Nation to Mrs D’Aquila and family and we pray their pain is assuaged in time.

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The pair testified that they thought that the recent revelations on the Slabbed blog about New Orleans lawyer Roy D’Aquila might have resulted in or contributed to his death yesterday. When the pair complained to the Justice that Slabbed had access to public court documents from Nova Scotia, Hood reminded them that the documents are public records and available for all to see. Perret asked that the Justice clear the courtroom for some of his testimony, which she refused to do.

Leary and Perret testified repeatedly about the contempt which they felt Handshoe had displayed for the Nova Scotia Judiciary and Hood reminded him that the judiciary was not a party to the case.

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Louisiana Insurance Commish Jim Donelon

And folks this is what happens when a clown is elected as Insurance Commish. Heckuva job Jimbo!

I have been informed that the FBI is providing witness protection to certain Slabbed commenters whose privacy was violated by Charles Leary and Vaighn Perret and their Canadian Do Bitch Judge Pierre Muise.

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@SLABBEDblog It's coming . . . !—
Trout Point Lodge (@TroutPointLodge) January 30, 2012

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July 22, 2001 Sunday

Nova Scotia Nirvana;  Trout Point Lodge is rich in Louisiana roots, an hour from the  Evangeline Trail, co-owned by New Orleanians who used to make cheese at the north shore’s Chicory Farm. But it’s decidedly Canadian, an unparalleled wilderness experience in the lap of luxury.

BYLINE: By Millie Ball; Travel editor

SECTION: TRAVEL; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 2229 words

EAST KEMPTVILLE, NOVA SCOTIA — Once a month, from May through October, New Orleans lawyer Daniel Abel catches a flight to Maine and then a boat to Yarmouth, a town at the southern tip of Nova Scotia. By the next morning, Abel has settled into another week-long stay at Trout Point Lodge. It’s his idea of heaven. Others agree, including Food and Wine magazine, which raved about it last month. The 10-bedroom lodge is surrounded by 200 acres of spruce and pine and birch and maple trees and overlooks the Tusket River and a pond that reflects the clouds and skies above Nova Scotia. The interior is Metropolitan Home rustic, with kilim rugs and furniture crafted from tree branches. The comforting smell of earlier fires that crackled in the many fireplaces mingles with fresh scent of spruce logs that were trucked in to build the lodge.

Abel’s one of the owners. He knows how to find Trout Point, which isn’t easy. It’s an hour north of Yarmouth and an hour east of the Evangeline Trail, the heart of Acadian Nova Scotia.

“Go past East Kemptville to East Kemptville Road” — a dirt road, by the way — “then turn at the lodge sign and follow the electrical wires to the end,” said Vaughn Perret, Abel’s business partner with Charles Leary. Perret was talking on a cell phone that kept fading in and out.

Perret and Leary run the lodge, now in its second season, as well as a nearby cheese dairy farm similar to their last project, the north shore’s Chicory Farm, which gained some renown in the mid-1990s. Abel still spends most of his time in New Orleans. He is a partner in plaintiff king Wendell Gauthier’s law firm, working on high-powered cases: the cigarette suit, the mayor’s case again gun makers, and a suit against Nintendo that alleges video games can trigger epilepsy in children.

But in Nova Scotia, the 54-year-old Abel slows way down. He becomes a favorite cousin to people he’s never met, sitting back and chatting between meals. His blue eyes are soft and smiling above a beard most folks would describe as salt and pepper. He wears a white chef’s jacket, unbuttoned at the top and sometimes spattered with remnants of dishes he’s prepared. He teaches guests at the lodge how to make a roux — pushing his reading glasses to mid-forehead as he explains Cajun and Creole food. He cooks a mean duck etouffee. He breathes in the fresh air. He leans over to scratch the lopey puppy Claudius behind the ears and coo, “Who loves you the most?”

Trout Point does that to people.

It’s quiet on the river, and as guests read on the red and blue plaid cushions on the porch lounge chairs, about the only sounds are birds that chirp like canaries and wind that ruffles the leaves, sounding like rain.

Southern Nova Scotia had been depressingly overcast for days before I arrived at the lodge the second week of July. But my first full day here, the glories of summer touted in magazines and movies — but never experienced in New Orleans — – burst forth. It was crisply cool. The sun dazzled, reflecting off the water, bouncing off leaves, rocks, blades of grass, even the tops of wood posts on the porch. Some guests went kayaking and canoeing, although truth be told you can’t go too far in the river because of rocks. Some prefer to drive an hour or so to sea kayak or fish or take a whale watching cruise. Others walk trails. Two physicians from Boston gathered wild mushrooms for Perret to identify. “He’s a born botanist,” said Abel. “Where did you find that one?!” Perret asked the Bostonians, studying a rare mottled orange specimen, leaving it out for other guests to see.

Me? I walked the road and the forest path, although one day big black flies swarmed around my head so fiercely it made me think of the swirl of dirt around Pig Pen in the Peanuts cartoon. Swat. Slap. They seemed to thrive on Off. The next day they were gone.

But mainly I chilled. I’d already taken the whale watch boat and toured the Evangeline Trail, and seen the summertime production of “Evangeline” down the road in Church Point before ending my trip here.

Trout Point Lodge is a place to nestle. After my daily walks, I read. And napped. And sniffed. The pines and the spruce made me think I was in an oversized Christmas tree lot, with lakes. And I tried to figure out the aromas from the kitchen downstairs. Was that a rich broth? Duck? Bread? Yes, that night we ate sublime fish dumplings in a vegetable broth and Abel’s marvelous duck etouffee and, of course, fresh bread.

Taking it easy
Operations at Trout Point are, well, loose. Very. Sometimes it seems more like visiting three guys who have a fabulous place and love to cook than staying in an inn. Those in need of schedules may not do well here, and while a few griped a bit, most guests seemed to agree with Mark, a shoe manufacturer from Kennebunkport, Maine. “We’re on vacation,” he said. “No schedules. I like it.” An information sheet in the room stated dinner was at 8 p.m. About 8:30, guests were all still sipping wine around the fireplaces in the great room and on the porch. “What time’s dinner?” I asked Mark. “They say 9, so I’ll go down about 9:15.” He chuckled. We sat down at 10. Wonderful food accompanied by homemade bread. We ate sweet potato soup seasoned with smoked fish, clams Rockefeller, a green salad, beet greens with a slice of shark — “Are you sure you want to know what it is?” Abel asked when he set down the plate. A retired teacher from Florida just had told us about the shark attack in Destin. She couldn’t eat it, but I was blissfully ignorant of any detailed news — one of the pleasures of a vacation — and thought the shark was tasty, even laughing at myself when I decided it was the texture of a chicken breast, the oldest food comparison cliche of all. We finished with a choice of molten lava chocolate cake with creme anglaise, apricot tart or lemon curd.

The guys, as we came to call the trio, shared in preparing the meals and serving them. Over four nights, as we became friends, their personalities and differences became more evident. The boyish looking Perret, a New Orleans born lawyer who’ll be 42 Aug. 3, has dark hair and doe eyes and is soft spoken, but is the firmly-in-command soul of the lodge, directing pace and aesthetics. Tousled-haired Leary, 35, a native of Oregon who has a doctorate in history and lived in China for a while, stays in the background, cooking and focusing on business details and the cheese production. “I’m not from Louisiana like Vaughn and Abel, so I don’t talk as much as they do,” he says. Both wear below the knee shorts and sandals most of the time, while Abel rarely takes off his chef’s jacket.

They work on whim with what’s best in the markets or what they find themselves in the sea or in fields, creating new dishes or altering familiar ones. Louisiana cookbooks are scattered around the kitchen to inspire personal adaptations of local fare. “People come here to eat; it’s one of the major reasons,” said Perret.

We ate five-course dinners family style, at a long table covered with a cloth and lighted by candles. On either end of the heavily beamed country kitchen style dining room, snapping fires burned in twin granite fireplaces. Edith Piaf sang. Gregorian chants. Rousing symphonies.

Around the table were doctors, lawyers, teachers, professionals who can afford the $300 or so a day it costs per couple, all meals included. One night we talked and ate and talked and ate, and finally, Marsha, a Bostonian who with her husband, runs the oldest art gallery in the country — “dead artists,” he explained — – twirled her napkin like a second liner and announced, “It’s midnight. I’m going to bed.”

“Can we eat earlier?” I asked Perret. He admitted he likes to eat after sunset, almost 10 in the Atlantic Time Zone that’s an hour later than Eastern, but said he’d serve us earlier the next nights. And he did. We sat down around 8:45 p.m. He said we could eat sooner if we wanted.

Lunches are three courses, also served — the salmon-pink steelhead trout almandine was amazing. But one day when I was on food overload, I asked staff member Michelle Hattie if I could have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and eat on the porch. She laughed, then made one. The staff is down home friendly; Michelle and her husband, James, help where needed. Indispensable Ronnie Harris is all over the place, chopping wood and building fires, including one for the hot tub by the river; Karine and Isabelle, two French-speaking students from Quebec, work as maids so they can improve their English.

The guests. The guys. The staff. A good mix.

Chicory Farm
Perret and Leary met at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Abel, a native of Lafayette, who grew up working in restaurants, is a longtime family friend of Perret’s. In the early 1990s, they united to start Chicory Farm in Louisiana’s Washington Parish; they grew organic produce, but became better known for their goat cheese and blue cheese, which they sold to restaurants ranging from Commander’s Palace to Gramercy Tavern and Picholine in New York. Abel took a two-year sabbatical from law to run Chicory Farm Cafe, a Creole vegetarian restaurant in New Orleans’ University area.

In 1998, they shut it all down. Perret’s and Leary’s reasons for leaving Louisiana for a while are personal and complicated, as those things tend to be. They already had bought a place in Nova Scotia and they settled again in Ithaca for the winter, when not traveling or working in Costa Rica on their next place. The partners still are debating the format, whether it’ll be for cooking classes like they sometimes hold at Trout Point or a retreat or whatever, but say it should be ready next January, maybe.

They opened the cheese dairy on Nova Scotia’s Chebogue Peninsula, and last summer, the lodge. Their mission is simple: Good eating in a wilderness setting. “I came for the wilderness without camping,” said Marsha, of the Boston art gallery. “I’ve never been anywhere else like this,” said a guest from Maine. “It’s a true retreat.”

Abel is the steadying glue — – and a good evangelist. The guys won’t name names, but the 200 acres have become a haven for some prominent New Orleans and Jefferson residents.

“Mr. Broussard was up here last week with his son,” said a construction worker outside a brand new lakeside home I checked out on my walk. “Mr. Broussard?” “Aaron,” he said, as in Jefferson Parish Council chairman. “This is his house.”

And “Miss Marie’s” house over there, that would be Miss Marie . . . ? Listening carefully to his garbled pronunciation, I came up with “Marie Krantz?” “Yes, that’s her,” he said. As in the Fair Grounds’ Marie Krantz. Wendell Gauthier is an investor, though he’s never been here. New Orleans attorney Peter J. Butler Jr. said on the phone he invested as a 2 percent partner, and plans to visit for the first time next October. “We hope to make money, but if we don’t, I hear it’s a nice place to visit.”

“They counted on us to create something beautiful,” said Perret.

The above is property of the New Orleans Times Picayune. It is published here on Slabbed in its entirety for journalistic and educational purposes under the fair use provisions found in 17 U.S.C. § 107. Slabbed claims no legal rights to the following beyond fair use. ~ sop

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With that said I need to describe the goal. The Fox 8 file is around 5,000 pages and copy costs are 70 cents a page.  There appears to be lots of gold nuggets buried throughout the court file such as the now infamous letter to Charlie and Vaughn. Something tells me the FBI has been hip to the Nova Scotia ecotourism scene as well, likely dating back several months. I’m proud we’ve been on the cutting edge of this.

If you are sitting out there and like what you’re learning, whether using your I-Pad Chris Roberts style at 5AM, are at a law firm checking in during lunch or at the family desktop after hours you can’t depend on the next guy to tote the whole load. The power of Slabbed derives from the power of community sourcing. With 2,000 plus daily unique visitors if everyone did just a little, Slabbed could get everyone a big time bang for the journalist buck (and fund a big time 1st Amendment lawyer). Please visit Slabbed.Org to find out more.

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Trout Point Lodge

The Times-Picayune has referenced Trout Point Lodge in some of the stories published in print and online since Jan. 6 regarding an ethics complaint against former Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard claiming that he owns a Nova Scotia vacation lodge that he rented to parish contractors.

The newspaper retracts publication identifying Aaron Broussard as having an ownership interest in Trout Point Lodge; asserting Trout Point Lodge was rented to Jefferson Parish contractors; indicating that Roy D’Aquila has any part in Trout Point Lodge ownership or management; indicating that Kempt Wilderness Lodge Services has any ownership or management relationship with Trout Point Lodge; and identifying a photo of the lodge online as “Broussard-lodge.jpg.” The Times-Picayune apologizes for publishing this material.

Of course we now know that retraction is in fact a falsehood in and of itself when Slabbed broke the letter written by Roy D’Aquila to Trout Point Lodge ordering the Libel Tourists Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret to insure Broussard’s cabin on the Lodge’s main insurance policy, since the “Lot Assessments” were not covering Broussard’s note on the cottage. That revelation came on the heels of the plea deal reached by the government with Aaron Broussard’s ex-wife which indicated that she would be giving up Aaron’s Nova Scotia money train as illustrated on Slabbed. And then the most recent revelation of fluttering butterflies and rumored turmoil inside the law firm of D’Aquila, Volk, Mullins & Contreras.

I mention all this because Slabbed has learned that Roy D’Aquila has passed away. I wish to express the condolences of the Slabbed Nation to his family.

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The Law Office of Jim Davis, primarily a criminal practice, had a substantial client base of individuals with criminal backgrounds who worked offshore on rigs and commercial fishing vessels. Other clients included local residents who worked in seafood processing plants, hospitality and food service, and tourists cited for DUl and other charges while visiting this area. All of these industries and businesses sustained a devastating economic impact by the BP oil spill, and drastically reduced his clients’ ability to pay for legal services, resulting in greatly diminished profits and the lay-offs of one attorney and one secretary.

Now folks lest we gain too much of a reputation for being a plaintiff friendly blog….

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Leary’s 10 page copy and paste of Slabbed, circa February to April 2011, omitted one key element that would have cast the pleading in an entirely new light as I was not anonymous at all dating to May of 2010 when I appeared on Fox 8 in a Val Bracy story about TheRiot’s Jackassery suing the blogosphere.  Leary and Perret had been following Slabbed closely since we busted them on the Billy’s Hill Trail Society way back on January 12, 2010.  But of course of all the posts we had in April the one that failed to make Leary’s pleading was this one from April 14, 2011, where I announced Slabbed New Media and posted a link to my Mississippi Secretary of State filing.  And since Canadian judges evidently make decisions based on what are effectively ex parte motions, the result is an invasion of privacy of gargantuan proportions.

Judge Muise is evidently too dumb to see the blatant inconsistencies in his own court record, but like a pre schooler he colored all over Leary’s motion whittling the time away while acting as if he were actually doing something productive for his community.  Muise appears to be a good fit with your typical Mississippi Justice Court Judge.

There is a reason we have the SPEECH Act here in the US.  In fact I see the need for additional protections.

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