Carla JeanBatiste, Chairperson of the St. Martin Parish Council, who now appears to have been far more active in the Billy Broussard affairs and the Facebook group of Mendy “Mob Boss” Girouard than Broussard knew to be the case in late November of 2022 when he filed a Motion to Compel the Facebook posts pertaining to his property on Duchamp Road in Broussard, Louisiana.
It was only a few days ago that we published this feature as a preview of today (Tuesday, May 23, 2023)’s court hearing wherein Mendy “Mob Boss” Girouard and Melissa Dubroc sought to recover their attorney fees incurred in defense of a defamation suit filed by Billy Broussard.
We made the football analogy of Broussard, in his extensive Opposition Memorandum, literally sending an all-out blitz to sack the quarterback who, in the football analogy, would be their defense attorney, Eric Timothy Haik. Haik was sacked today in court, and the ball was turned over on downs to Broussard!
Judge Vincent Borne, as is stated on the following video, was incredibly respectful and courteous to both sides at today’s hearing; furthermore, he did an excellent job of summing up where everything stood going into the hearing. He likely wanted to minimize time spent because his court has a major trial ongoing entailing the St. Martin Parish School Board v. Shell Oil. Consequently, there was a large audience of attorneys watching this proceeding as they took a pause for this matter before resuming their obviously far more serious matter pending before the court.
In the following video, Broussard covers many of the benefits he obtained from filing the litigation to particularly include the extensive material gathered which he believes will be useful whenever he chooses to convene his own court hearing for a Permanent Injunction regarding the 33-acre farm he purchased which formed the basis for all of the litigation filed in the last 21 months (both where he’s had the roles of plaintiff and defendant):
Broussard covers his courtroom victory with particular focus on material learned about the present Chairperson of the St. Martin Parish Council, District 2 Councilwoman Carla JeanBatiste.
On November 21, 2022, when Broussard filed his Motion to Compel Discovery entailing the “Mob Boss” Facebook group posts, he went out of his way on the video to indicate that he felt there was “no way” Batiste was actively involved in the despicable acts of “Mob Boss” and her associates.
We at Sound Off Louisiana, however, were a little more dubious about JeanBatiste. Accordingly, we telephoned JeanBatiste on November 28, 2022 and invited her to appear on camera and place distance between herself and the vicious material “Mob Boss” was publishing. When JeanBatiste declined to even return our call, our suspicion level only increased. Given what all Broussard learned from his newly-obtained Facebook posts by “Mob Boss,” we can now much more readily see why she didn’t return our call.
We at Sound Off Louisiana are going to take it a step further. JeanBatiste’s husband is Harold JeanBatiste, who is St. Martin Parish Sheriff Becket Breaux’s Chief Deputy. We now believe the evidence is becoming overwhelming that what transpired was a husband and wife team wherein Carla JeanBatiste worked with “Mob Boss” to assist with the dissemination of falsehoods about Broussard on that Facebook group while her husband, Harold, worked with others to effectuate a completely baseless arrest of Broussard on May 10, 2022. That’s our theory after an extensive and in-depth delving into just what all transpired between December of 2021 and May of 2022 entailing what is one more sordid scandal as evidenced by all of those Facebook posts!
We have repeatedly offered St. Martin Parish Sheriff Becket Breaux the opportunity to appear on camera to speak on the Broussard arrest, and he has declined every invitation. The only quote we have from him is second-hand from someone who told us that Breaux said, “I’m not happy that my office was dragged into all of this!” Well, if his office was “dragged” into the whole Broussard matter (and it must have been given that it’s his office that made the arrest of Broussard on May 10, 2022), it would seem to us that it was Breaux’s Chief Deputy, Harold JeanBatiste, who is the obvious culprit for having engaged in such “dragging.”
Getting back to Broussard and his resounding courtroom win today, here are educational lessons we believe were obtained from it and this whole litigation:
#1) Haik learned about LA CCP Article 971 (Special Motion to Strike) and how much more effective it may be in defending a lawsuit of the nature Broussard filed against “Mob Boss” and Scott Lopez (Haik was defense attorney for that suit too, and Lopez also failed to recover attorney fees). We think it was nice of “Mob Boss” and Dubroc to remit $6,000 ($3,000 each) to Haik for him to gain a better appreciation of a Special Motion to Strike. Of course, that’s assuming that he had any appreciation of it whatsoever at the outset of the litigation because, if he did, it sure begs the question of why he failed to file it.
#2) Ali LeBlanc and Eric Haik both gained a better appreciation of Louisiana Local Rule 9.5 and its five-business-day period for an opposing attorney (or pro se litigant) to object to the wording of a proposed judgment. We’re not about to assert that either Haik or LeBlanc didn’t already know that because even a law school graduate with a week of experience knows it! Perhaps they learned that it may be best not to play fast and loose with it under the mistaken belief that a pro se litigant won’t know its terms or have the ability to look it up.
#3) Facebook posts can end up being costly.
As Broussard said in the video above, it is election season, and we think it’s going to be an interesting one, and it just may be far more challenging for an incumbent St. Martin Parish Council Chairwoman than she may have previously thought given some rumblings we’re hearing in the St. Martin Parish community of voters!
What an interesting saga. Mob Boss said some things that were not true and Broussard took issue. This was never about winning or losing, this was about extracting a pound of flesh…well maybe 6,000 lbs and getting access to information. You must wonder what would have happened if Mob Boss had just offered to correct the record and apologized; Broussard may have dropped the whole issue. There is a reason people like Donald Trump settle lawsuits, attorneys are expensive, even the crappy ones. There is one intriguing fact that piqued my curiosity that Burns never addressed. The Lopez and Mob Boss lawsuits were virtually identical, yet Mob Boss likely paid a lot more than Lopez in legal fees. Why is that? Did Lopez and Haik have history? But by far the most interesting part of this case was Broussard’s legal filings. His legal arguments were sound, but it was the liberties he took that even the most seasoned attorneys would find fascinating. In fact, many were written for public consumption first, the Judge second, which apparently got under the judge’s skin. It is not often you see in a public filing where a pro se litigant offers a license attorney ‘remedial’ legal training, but Broussard did exactly that. And much to Haik’s chagrin, I have no doubt that Mr. Broussard’s filings were popular reading material at the Clerk’s office. To make matters worse, Burns highlighted every mistake Haik made including failures that possibly cost his clients substantial amounts of money. But before we feel too sorry for Haik, let’s remember he is walking around with a pocket full of Girouard’s and Dubrac’s money.
So thankful to hear MR BROUSSARD will be RUNNING FOR PARISH PRESIDENT OF ST MARTINVILLE…….. As another hard-working man I can tell you this much he has MA VOTE I can’t wait to see the corruption get rooted out of St Martin parish…………. A MAN FOR THE PEOPLE