L. Lin Wood purportedly told his former legal partners that his actions were guided by “God Almighty.”
L. Lin Wood, one of the attorneys who represented Nicholas Sandmann in several defamation cases against major media outlets, has been accused of “erratic” behavior by three of his former legal partners.
According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, the lawsuit against Wood was filed late last week by attorneys Nicole Wade, Jonathon Grunberg, and Taylor Wilson.
Wood, notes the Enquirer, is best known for representing Nicholas Sandmann, a Kentucky teenager who sued CNN—along with several other media outlets—for their coverage of a 2019 incident in Washington, D.C. While initial reports suggested that Sandmann demeaned an indigenous rights activist at a political rally, footage publicly released later on revealed that Sandmann and his fellow high school classmates were being harassed by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites.
Wood is also representing Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of killing two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last month.
Despite Wood’s high-profile work with conservative figures, his former partners—who left Wood’s firm in February—are accusing him of “erratic, abusive and unprofessional behavior.”
Wood’s misbehavior purportedly included “incoherent” phone calls and e-mails, as well as claims that the attorney’s actions were guided by none other than “God Almighty.”
In one incident cited in the lawsuit, Wood sent over a dozen people a late-night e-mail in which he alleged he had been victimized “by some unspecified action.” Later in the same message, Wood vowed to mete out punishment “at the discretion of Almighty God.”
Two hours after that message was sent, Wood sent a follow-up e-mail asserting that “God was somehow commanding or directing him to accuse” his partners of misconduct, and that “God had given [Wood] permission” to use profanity in his correspondences.
Wood also referred to an associate attorney as a “Chilean Jewish [expletive] crook.”
Several days later, Wood sent out another mass e-mail—directed to 18 attorneys—recanting “every one of his accusations,” saying he had made “accusatory statements with incomplete information and out of anger, coupled with a tried brain and body.”
However, Wood has been quick to defend himself, saying his partners are trying to “extort money” and build a reputation atop his success.
“These young lawyers have chosen to willingly engage in a disgraceful and unprofessional effort to publicly attack me by including irrelevant, out-of-context private messages I sent to them in the midst of a difficult time in my personal life arising primarily from my family’s reaction to my faith in Jesus Christ,” Wood said in a statement. “Now, in a shakedown effort to coerce me to do what I believe the ethical rules of my profession prohibit, they manipulate and ignore truth to try to force me, without my client’s consent, to pay their separate law firms an unreasonable portion of my earned fee, while repeatedly refusing to provide my client any proof of the work they claim to have performed on the case.”
The lawsuit against Wood, adds the Enquirer, relates to a round of confidential settlements obtained by Wood on behalf of Sandmann.
His partners say the settlement terms require Wood to pay out substantial fees.
Each of the three attorneys suing him claim to have performed “substantial work—if not the majority of the work” in each defamation case.
Sources
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