THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 21, 1995 TAG: 9511210270
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
One day after the State Bar suspended his law license for five years, lawyer Barry L. Jenkins has been slapped with a $9 million legal malpractice lawsuit.
The suit, filed Friday in Circuit Court, accuses Jenkins of botching a $9 million sexual harassment lawsuit against the Christian Broadcasting Network in 1992.
Jenkins, who has been practicing law for 16 years, voluntarily agreed to the bar's suspension Thursday in response to 11 complaints against him from 1993 to 1995.
Many complaints alleged a severe lack of communication, including months of unreturned letters and phone calls. One alleged that Jenkins settled a personal injury lawsuit without the client's knowledge or permission.
Friday's lawsuit follows the same pattern.
Plaintiff Hanan K. Tudor hired Jenkins in 1991 to handle her case against CBN. She had worked for CBN as a newscaster in Lebanon from 1984 to 1988. She claimed a supervisor sexually harassed her, then had her fired when she refused his advances.
She sued CBN and two supervisors in 1991, seeking $6 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages.
But Tudor claims that Jenkins withdrew, or non-suited, her CBN lawsuit in 1992 without her knowledge. She claims that Jenkins ducked her phone calls for several months afterward and she found out about his non-suit in 1993, after hiring another lawyer. By then, she claims, it was too late to refile the lawsuit.
On Monday, Jenkins denied Tudor's charge, saying she knew about his non-suit. He also denied that he was ducking her phone calls.
``If you call me, I will call you back,'' Jenkins said. ``I'm perfectly willing to admit when I'm at fault. I've done that'' in the State Bar cases, Jenkins said. ``But I'm not wrong'' in the Tudor case, he added.
Jenkins said last week that the bar complaints arose from cases he had delegated to others while tending to outside business matters. Tudor's case was not among the 11 bar complaints against him.
To win her case, Tudor must prove that Jenkins was negligent in handling her case and that she would have won it if not for that negligence.
KEYWORDS: LEGAL MALPRACTICE by CNB