Bean There, Done That
Malpractice lawsuit filed by alleged Terry Bean sex abuse victim to be dismissed; civil case against Bean apparently settled in 2022
It’s difficult to keep track of all the various criminal and civil court cases stemming from the alleged sexual abuse by Terry Bean and his former partner Kiah Lawson, of the minor known by the pseudonym “M.S.G.” in September 2013, but here’s a brief update.
19CV12726 M.S.G. vs Lori Deveny
In March 2019, M.S.G.’s new attorney Sean Riddell filed for malpractice against his former attorney, now-disgraced Portland lawyer Lori Deveny, who is currently cooling her jets in a federal prison in Arizona. Among other things, the lawsuit alleged that Deveny stole the settlement money she negotiated for M.S.G., which is very much not legal malpractice.
The case had been entirely inactive for four years, while Deveny’s criminal case proceeded, but I wrote about M.S.G.’s possible malpractice payout and the irregular court proceedings last month, calling out Deveny’s attorney Brett Mersereau by name.
Just two business days later — and apropos of nothing that I can find — Mersereau filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, citing M.S.G.’s “failure to prosecute” the case. I’m continuing to watch the docket, but the time for Riddell to respond has passed.¹
Riddell could have secured at least $50,000 for M.S.G. through the Oregon State Bar’s Client Security Fund, but he instead bizarrely paused the claim that M.S.G. had filed on his own.
I have independently learned that the Bar is now refusing to pay out any new Client Security Fund claims related to Deveny’s crime spree, but M.S.G.’s claim is still on hold.
More on that very soon.
3:19-cv-00325 M.S.G. vs Terrence Bean
The civil case that Riddell filed against Bean in Multnomah — which was quickly moved to federal court — was at appeal when the criminal case version 2.0 fell apart in January 2022, due to M.S.G.’s insistence that he no longer wished to “participate” in the prosecution of Bean (or of Lawson).
A month after the criminal case was dismissed, Bean’s and M.S.G.’s attorneys filed a motion with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stipulating to a dismissal of the appeal “without costs or fees to either party.” Two weeks later, the parties stipulated to dismissing the case entirely, with prejudice, again without costs or fees.
A reasonable person would assume that M.S.G. and Bean settled the matter for a sum somewhere between 1 and 6.1 million dollars — the amount that Riddell demanded in 2019.
201423604, 19CR00847, and 22CN00193 State vs Terrence Bean
Bean has apparently had the records of both the 2014 and 2019 criminal cases against him expunged.
Additionally, Bean also moved the court for an order “setting aside and sealing” his contempt records, specifically the accusatory instrument and judgment which found that he entered into the civil compromise settlement agreement with M.S.G. back in 2015, against Judge Charles Zennaché’s order.
Judge Zennaché has not ruled on the motion, and those records remain public.
201423603 and 19CR00852 State vs Kiah Lawson
Kiah Lawson’s criminal cases are still very much a matter of public record. Lawson’s 2019 conviction was reversed and remanded because it was the result of a nonunanimous jury verdict. He was on track for a new trial in mid-2022.
I recently learned that a motion filed by Lawson’s defense attorneys in March 2021 was set to be heard on February 11, 2022 — having been calendared by the court on October 12, 2021. Prosecutors were given until January 7, 2022 to respond to the defense motion.
That motion strongly appears to have been what caused the criminal cases against Bean and Lawson to erode.
It was an “OEC 412” motion,² which asked the court to decide if M.S.G.’s statements to law enforcement about his “past sexual behavior” would be admissible in court.
The defense argued that M.S.G.’s statements — about his use of a dating app for adults, through which he had “met at least one other man in person” — were relevant to the minor’s “motive and bias” for following through with a prosecution against only Lawson and Bean, a wealthy real estate developer.
It’s perfectly understandable that an alleged victim would not want to subject themselves to that type of personal scrutiny at a criminal trial — or even be able to stomach a hearing on whether or not such scrutiny would be admissible at trial.
It’s easy to imagine that such a prospect is what caused M.S.G. to state “unequivocally” to prosecutors that he was done with the prosecution, causing everything to fall apart.
All of this is such a big mess, dragged out for a decade, that it’s hard to untangle. Clearly there’s a lot that we still don’t know, and may never.
What I do know is that these matters perfectly illustrate the enormous gulf between the rich and the poor, and their access to justice, both civilly and criminally — to say nothing of the access to privacy and confidentiality that the rich enjoy.
The cases also call into question Oregon’s commitment to prosecuting minor sex abuse charges, even when the alleged victim is an unwilling witness. Something is either a crime or it isn’t.
Finally, it’s notable that none of the attorneys involved in the improper 2015 civil compromise and subsequent “secreting” of M.S.G. have faced any real trouble for their conduct. Deanna Wray, for instance, allegedly witness-tampered yet avoided criminal prosecution and ethical charges with the state Bar.
And we still don’t even know how Lori Deveny got involved in this mess to begin with.
¹ This case appears to have been mishandled by Riddell, who may also be subject to a malpractice claim.
² According to Oregon case law, OEC 412 protects “victims of sexual crimes from degrading and embarrassing disclosure of intimate details about their private lives.”
