LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones — in jeopardy of the Nevada bar disciplinary board revoking his license to follow regulation — will probably be allowed to current proof to the decision-making panel of his “mental state” when he deleted textual content messages associated to a controversial land improvement deal, paperwork obtained by the 8 Information Now Investigators reveal.
Jones, the paperwork say, improperly deleted textual content messages from his telephone to cover negotiations with then-commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Steve Sisolak regarding a decades-long dispute between the county and a developer, Gypsum Assets.
The county settled with Gypsum, partly due to Jones’ position as counsel for neighbors opposing the deal, for $80 million in June. The specter of shedding in court docket with greater than $2 billion on the road pressured the county towards resolving the litigation.
In an order filed by the workplace of bar counsel this week, the chair of the state bar’s panel overseeing these disciplinary hearings stated the panel is not going to relitigate the difficulty of whether or not Jones deleted these messages from his private telephone.
In October 2022, a federal decide Justice of the Peace held a listening to and sanctioned Jones, figuring out that he had in reality deleted the messages.
At a listening to in November, Jones — by way of his attorneys — argued that the Justice of the Peace decide, Elayna Youchach, didn’t subject a ‘ultimate adjudication’ on the difficulty of whether or not Jones deleted the messages as a result of she didn’t maintain an evidentiary listening to on the matter. However, within the order, chairman Andrew Chiu, discovered that there is no such thing as a such requirement.
Jones’ attorneys additionally argued that he didn’t have a full and honest alternative to litigate the deletion subject in entrance of Youchach. However Chiu wrote: “Although he was not a party, he had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issues in Federal Court as he was directly involved in the proceedings, having multiple opportunities to present testimony, declarations, etc. to the allegations and hence the deletion of the text messages themselves should not be relitigated.”
The order permits Jones to introduce proof of his psychological state on the time of these deletions, indicating that Youchach’s written determination that Jones deleted his messages in “bad faith” was not based mostly on any proof.
That subject “as well as the determination of which Rules of Professional Conduct the Respondent violated, and the associated appropriate discipline, will be and should be decided by the Panel at hand,” Chiu wrote.
Jones has a three-day listening to scheduled with the panel in March. The bar counsel has instructed the 8 Information Now Investigators that both disbarment or a suspension of Jones’ regulation license are doable.
