Six-year legal fight ends as Fulton jury dismisses liability for woman who said her name was forged onto loans

Stephanie Everett and Ryan Pumpian represented a woman who was sued multiple times over millions of dollars in unpaid loans that she said she never knew about or signed for. John Disney/Daily Report

Stephanie Everett and Ryan Pumpian represented a woman who was sued multiple times over millions of dollars in unpaid loans that she said she never knew about or signed for.
John Disney/Daily Report

Greg Land, Daily Report
September 19, 2014

Sharon Ivey’s nightmare began as she tried on a $100 red swimsuit in 2008.

Her husband, Gus Pounds, started to sweat profusely, then became so upset that the couple had to leave the store. Asked what was wrong, Pounds said his companies were $12 million in debt. Ivey, now Pounds’ ex-wife, said she soon learned that she was holding the bag for millions of dollars in unpaid loans she knew nothing about.

On Aug. 28, a Fulton County jury put the nightmare to rest with a verdict clearing her of liability for loan guaranties that her attorney said were based on forged documents. “It was a good day to be a lawyer,” said Stephanie Everett of Bloom Sugarman Everett, who, with firm colleague Ryan Pumpian, represents Ivey.

“I’ve been fighting this fight alongside her since January of 2008,” said Everett.

The verdict wrapped up the last of 23 lawsuits related to what Everett described as fraudulent loan guaranties ascribed to Ivey. All of the cases—with the exception of the one concluded in Fulton Superior Court—were ultimately dismissed by the lenders and vendors who filed them.

The plaintiff is an entity ultimately owned jointly by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Lennar Corp./Rialto Capital Management. It was created to handle loans the FDIC assumed in the wake of dozens of Georgia bank failures.

Hartman Simons & Wood senior counsel Irene Vander Els, who with associate Chelsea Dennis represents the plaintiff, declined to comment on the case.

According to Everett and court filings, Pounds was involved in real estate development and also ran a building company. But the companies were in his wife’s name, Everett said.

“She knew they were in her name, but she didn’t know what it meant,” said Everett. “He had told that that was to protect her if anything ever happened to him.”

Everett’s firm had been representing the Pounds companies even before the swimsuit episode, which occurred in Florida. Back in Atlanta, the couple met with Everett, and Pounds revealed that there were “documents out there with [Sharon’s] name on them.”

“It was quite emotional,” said Everett, who began contacting banks and having loan documents faxed to her. All bore signatures that were “somewhat similar” to Sharon’s, she said, but they were definitely not hers.

“Within a few months the true picture came clear,” she said. “The companies were about $35 million in debt, and she was purportedly personally responsible.”

Ivey took over operation of the companies, and Everett helped her shut them down.

“Then the lawsuits started,” she said. Actions naming Ivey as the defendant were filed in Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties by banks and trade vendors such as construction supply and landscaping companies.

“I handled every one of them,” Everett said. “Everybody else either dismissed their case or entered into a settlement agreement with [Ivey] not paying anything. Some took judgments against the companies; we ensured that she never had to come out of pocket because they weren’t her debts.”

Pounds was not named in the suits and did not participate in the trial. He never owned any of the companies, said his attorney, Strott & Tifverman partner Peter Strott.

Everett said Ivey separated from Pounds in 2008, and their divorce finalized as the litigation progressed.

The last case, tried in Fulton, involved five loans from now-defunct Integrity Bank: two to Northbrooke Homes Inc. for a total of $810,000, and three to Second Avenue Development totaling $556,000.

“In 2008, as soon as we called Integrity Bank and they faxed over the written guaranties that resembled Sharon’s signature, we immediately informed Integrity,” said Everett. When Integrity failed, “we notified the FDIC. Ultimately, the FDIC filed a lawsuit on these guaranties, we filed a motion for summary judgment, and they dismissed the case.”

“The FDIC packaged the notes and sold them to Rialto Capital Management, said Everett, and once again Ivey was told she was personally responsible for them.

As part of a prior suit, Everett said, a former office manager for the shuttered Pounds companies had been asked about the forgeries. The office manager repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, said Everett, who presented that evidence to Rialto.

“They dismissed without prejudice, started foreclosing on the properties, and started suing Sharon again,” she said.

By the time Rialto filed suit in Fulton County Superior Court in February 2013,it had foreclosed on two properties and set off those proceeds against what was owed, but Rialto added accrued interest to its claimed damages. According to the plaintiff’s portion of the pretrial order, as of Aug. 20, 2014, Ivey owed more than $1.7 million on the notes.

There were limited settlement discussions, Everett said.

“We talked about it, but Sharon was never willing to pay what they wanted because she never signed these notes, so the discussions didn’t go far,” she said.

Judge Henry Newkirk presided over the trial, which began Aug. 25.

Everett said Rialto called as witnesses its own representative and a handwriting expert, who testified that he had looked at two examples of Ivey’s signature, and confirmed that she had signed the documents.

“He looked at four more and they looked nothing alike,” said Everett. “At one point, the jury actually laughed.”

The defense did not feel a handwriting expert was necessary, she said.

“We believed that all of the evidence in this case overwhelmingly supported our client’s story that she did not sign the guaranties, and the use of a handwriting expert in this case seemed desperate,” said Everett.

Everett said she quizzed the plaintiff’s representative as to what sort of investigation had been conducted into the alleged forgeries.

“I asked him, ‘What have you done? You’ve known about this for years.’ His response was, ‘I don’t know. Nothing.’”

Everett said the defense tried to subpoena Pounds for trial, but difficulties serving him meant that he did not attend. But Newkirk did allow Pounds’ deposition testimony to come in, she said, in which he said that he ran the companies, that Ivey had no role in day-to-day operations of the companies, and that he was the point person for the bank.

Everett said she called the office manager to the stand, and the office manager again declined to answer questions concerning the purported forgeries.

“We don’t know if one or more people forged [Ivey’s] name,” said Everett. “What we know is that when the office manager testified at trial, she asserted her Fifth Amendment rights multiple times to questions directly asking whether she forged the signatures, whether she witnessed Mr. Pounds forge them, and whether she witnessed other people do it.”

No criminal charges were ever filed in the case, Everett said, although she said that the office manager’s attorney told the court that charges involving some of the alleged forgeries might still be considered within the statute of limitations.

After a two-day trial, the jury took about an hour to find for the defense, Everett said. The jury was eager to leave, she said, but some panelists stayed and told her they felt the plaintiff had failed to probe the forgeries and wondered why it continued to sue Ivey.

Everett said she and her firm were gratified to see their years of effort pay off.

“I’ve lived this story with her,” said Everett. “As an attorney, it’s my job to channel that into admissible evidence, so it was very satisfying to have her day in court, to have her name cleared, and to have the truth come out. To have your client hug you, say you’ve saved their life—that really means something.”

The case is RES-GA NBSA LLC v. Ivey-Pounds, No. 2013CV227496.

Read the full story: A Good Day to be a Lawyer

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