Appeals court reinstates claims against county judge
By Lilly Adkins
BSN Associate Editor
LOUISA — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinstated Billy and Amanda Lemasters’ civil rights claims against Lawrence County Judge-Executive Phillip Carter, alleging he removed Lemaster Towing from rotation in violation of their civil rights.
“On appeal, the Court found there was sufficient evidence that Judge Carter removed Lemaster Towing from the rotation list in retaliation for Lemaster exercising constitutional free speech for the case to proceed,” Lemaster’s attorney, Laura Jane Phelps, said in an email. “The Appellate Court affirmed dismissal of claims against Lawrence County holding the County could not be liable for Judge Carter’s conduct because there was no county policy that authorized Judge Carter’s removal of Lemaster Towing from rotation.”
In its order, the appeals court said, “All told, we affirm in part and reverse in part,” the appeals court said in its order. “We affirm the grant of summary judgment to Lawrence County on the Lemaster’s Monell claim. But we reverse the grant of summary judgment to Carter on their free-speech claim. And we reverse the discretionary dismissal of their tortious-interference claim. We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
The Lemasters’ lawsuit was filed Feb. 7, 2022, with summary judgement issued in favor of Carter on Jan. 26, 2022. The Lemasters filed an appeal Feb. 22,2022.
The lawsuit said that prior to Carter’s interference, Lemaster Towing was on the towing call list and would receive five to six calls per month. Following Carter’s alleged interference, the towing service started receiving zero to one call per month, the suit said.
Lemaster said in the complaint that his company was one of six on the rotation and that it cost them $3,800 per year to maintain the insurance required to remain on the rotation list.
Lemaster said in the complaint that when Carter was first elected, he and his wife expressed concerns that they were receiving very little or no calls at all from the county using the tow call list. Carter told them he would investigate the situation and make sure they got more calls.
In April 2019, Billy Lemaster expressed his personal opinions on Facebook concerning a recent firing of a Lawrence County EMS employee and was critical of the county’s decision, the complaint said.
On April 14, 2019, Carter called Lemaster and demanded that he remove his Facebook post because of the post’s poor reflection on Carter as judge-executive, saying that if he did, he would go to the EMS office the next morning to make sure Lemaster got more towing calls, the suit said, adding that Lemaster agreed to remove the post.
Lemaster said in the complaint that they had a steady volume of tow calls throughout the summer of 2019.
In September 2019, Lemaster said that Carter began interfering with operations at Cherryville Fire and Rescue, where Lemaster was serving as chief at the time.
Billy Lemaster resigned from his position as chief at the Cherryville Fire Department in September 2019 due to the conflict with Carter, but is still involved in its operations, the complaint said.