Who paid Brandon Boudreaux $12,000,000?
February 2, 2021
The case against Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow has gone a little quiet, but there is something to report about some of the players who are on the edges.
On March 31, 2020, Brandon Boudreaux filed a lawsuit alleging defamation. That suit was just settled for TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS!
We need to identify a few people for this to make sense:
Melani Boudreaux Pawlowski is the daughter of Lori’s deceased elder sister, Stacy. Lori sometimes refers to Melani as her daughter. Melani divorced Brandon Boudreaux and married Ian Pawlowski. When Melani left Brandon, she also left their four children. Brandon filed for and was granted temporary custody of the children, and there has been a very heated custody dispute going on ever since.
Robert Jarvis and Garrett Smith are the lawyers who were involved in representing Melani in the custody dispute. Smith also represented Lori’s sister, Summer Shiflett, and Zulema Pastenes, the wife of Lori’s deceased brother, Alex Cox. Smith gave Lori’s attorney, Mark Means, a copy of Rob Wood and Summer Shiflett’s recording. He was called as a witness during the hearing on Lori Vallow’s motion to disqualify Special Prosecutor Rob Wood.
Now a little about defamation. Defamation is a statement that injures a party’s reputation. To prove defamation, you must have:
A false statement that claims to be fact
Publication of that statement
Intention or at least negligence
Damages or harm.
Proving that the statement is true is an absolute defense to defamation.
Apparently, as part of their representation of Melani, Smith, and Jarvis issued press releases about the case. In one press release, they made some very nasty representations and presented them as fact. They published the statement by sending it out to news organizations and intended it to harm Brandon’s reputation. Brandon is a sales professional and a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The representations in the news release that Brandon had a history of victimizing women, used extreme and dark pornography to which he was addicted, engaged in homosexual affairs, was engaged with his family in organized crime, and had, along with his family, covered up instances of child molestation, drug addiction, kidnapping, assault, and killing were simply untrue. Clearly, those allegations had a detrimental effect on Brandon’s business and personal reputation.
Brandon sued Smith and Jarvis and their wives, personally. Why add the wives, who probably had nothing to do with it? Because Arizona is a community property state and Brandon’s attorney wanted to avoid any chance, they would try and transfer assets to their spouses. The judgment does have a few caveats in it. In Arizona, judgments can be reviewed for “reasonableness.” Since we don’t know all the details of the settlement, it’s hard to gauge reasonableness. Some of the awards could be categorized as punitive damages, designed to punish the defendants for their vindictiveness. The other provision is that the judgment may be paid in full or in part by the lawyer’s insurance carrier. In Arizona, lawyers get their malpractice insurance through private companies. It’s not clear how much the attorneys were insured for. This means Brandon may not get the full $12,000,000. Lawyers who represent people in this sort of case usually do so on a contingency fee agreement, meaning they only get paid if they win. They generally get 25 -33 percent if the case settles before trial. Still, Brandon will receive several million dollars in compensation for Smith and Jarvis maliciously smearing his good name.
Those of you who have seen the Investigation Discovery program Doomsday: The Missing Children,which featured Larry and Kay Woodcock, will remember that when Tylee and JJ’s bodies were found, the coroner required that JJ be identified by a family member. Brandon drove straight through from Phoenix, Arizona, to Rexburg, Idaho, and spared Kay and Larry by making the identification for them. Melani and Brandon’s children remain in his custody. Melani recently had a baby with her present husband, Ian Pawlowski.
