Former Warren Jeffs Bodyguard Wins Default Judgment Against Lyle Jeffs and Wayman

A former bodyguard and spokesman for imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs has won a multimillion-dollar judgment in a lawsuit against church leaders. The ruling, issued Monday in 5th District Court in St. George by Judge G. Rand Beacham, was reported by The Spectrum of St. George.

The plaintiff, William “Willie” Jessop, filed the suit in February. He claims that FLDS leaders ruined his business and harassed his family after he fell out with Jeffs. He seeks more than $57 million in damages and $25 million in punitive damages.

The complaint names Warren Jeffs, his brother Lyle Jeffs, his brother-in-law John Wayman, and about two dozen other individuals and organizations. Jessop alleges that these defendants worked to arrange a burglary at his excavation business and ranch in the Hildale area. The suit also claims that church leaders harassed his family, kept them under 24-hour surveillance, and expelled his children from FLDS schools. These are allegations in the complaint.

The judge found Lyle Jeffs and Wayman liable for some damages because they did not respond to a court summons and therefore lost the case by default. The judgment awards $26 million to R&W Excavation Inc., more than $1 million to Boulder Mountain Group Ranch, and more than $2.4 million to Jessop individually. Failing to answer a summons carried a cost in this case, a reminder that those who are given much are also held to account (Luke 12:48).

Jessop’s attorney, Mark James, said the judgment allows him to pursue collection of nearly $30 million from the two men. He said he may ask a court to require Lyle Jeffs and Wayman to testify about their assets. “There is a gap between having a judgment and having the money in hand. We have to collect,” James told The Spectrum.

The judgment states that no ruling on punitive damages will be made until an evidentiary hearing can be held, and no date for that hearing has been set. James said Warren Jeffs and other named defendants, including FLDS business entity NewEra Manufacturing Inc. and unnamed “John Doe” defendants who allegedly acted under FLDS leaders’ direction, have not yet been served with a summons. He said he expects Warren Jeffs to be served in the near future. “We’re trying to do this in an orderly fashion,” he said.

Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison after being found guilty last year of child sexual assault. According to the suit, Jessop had supported Jeffs until he became convinced of claims that Jeffs was having affairs with other men’s wives, and he renounced Jeffs’s role as the faith’s prophet. The suit says Jessop was expelled from the church and ordered to leave his home and family in 2011, because he had refused to file a false letter defending Jeffs against allegations that Jeffs trafficked and married 12- and 13-year-old girls from an FLDS settlement in Canada.

Jessop’s complaint further alleges that when he declined to say that his expulsion was the will of God, FLDS leaders raided R&W Excavating and removed computers and other electronic devices. “Records of job costing, site plans, scope of work descriptions, invoicing, receivables and payables were lost,” the suit states. It says the business was also badly damaged by a mass employee exodus after FLDS leaders told workers they would be excommunicated if they kept their jobs.

Source: Read the original report