Judge tosses sex-abuse suit against Palm Beach developer Ecclestone, finds attorney misconduct

A judge dismissed the case after finding evidence that the plaintiff’s attorney repeatedly lied to cover up his own misconduct.

WEST PALM BEACH — A sexual-abuse lawsuit against a prominent Palm Beach developer by his disinherited daughter unraveled days before it was scheduled to go to trial. A judge dismissed the case last week after ruling that the daughter’s lawyer repeatedly lied to cover up his own misconduct.

Rod Coleman, the Boca Raton-based attorney at the heart of the judge’s decision, has vowed to appeal the order if the judge doesn’t change his mind first. “Needless to say, I was pretty shocked when I read it,” Coleman said Friday. “‘Dumbfounded’ would be the better word.  His client, Wendy Mendelsohn, accused her father E. Llwyd Ecclestone Jr. in a 2017 lawsuit of molesting her when she was 10. Circuit Judge Joseph Curley dismissed the lawsuit this month and took the rare step of barring Mendelsohn from filing it again. Curley didn’t contemplate the legal merits of Mendelsohn’s claim in his Aug. 5 order, published days before jury selection was scheduled to begin. He focused instead on the actions of her attorney. Curley said Coleman lied repeatedly to the judge and defense attorneys, and, when confronted, lied again to conceal the deception.

Coleman’s “deliberate and contumacious disregard of the court’s authority” delayed the trial for more than a year and robbed an aging Ecclestone of his right to a fair trial, the judge ruled. He said he had no choice but to impose “the ultimate sanction.”

Coleman has denied all wrongdoing on behalf of himself and Mendelsohn, who the judge also accused of deceit. The attorney, who was partway through drafting a motion for reconsideration when reached for comment Friday, sounded incredulous.

“I can’t explain the judges’ order,” he said. “I cannot. I cannot. I cannot explain it. There’s no way in the world.”

Plaintiff’s attorney tried to hide evidence from defendant, Palm Beach County judge says

Wendy Mendelsohn poses with her husband, Josh. Mendelsohn sued her father, Palm Beach developer E. Llywd Ecclestone, in 2017 for alleged abuse during her childhood. A Palm Beach County judge dismissed the lawsuit days before it was scheduled to go to trial.

In his ruling, Curley described a pattern of ethical lapses involving an expert witness, Dr. Richard Loewenstein, and his abrupt departure from the case.

Coleman hired Loewenstein in 2022 to evaluate Mendelsohn and testify in support of her claims of childhood sexual abuse. Loewenstein specializes in the treatment of posttraumatic stress and dissociative disorders and was expected to testify as to Wendy’s dissociative amnesia.

However, rather than share the doctor’s findings with Ecclestone’s attorneys, Curley said Coleman tried to delay the disclosure as long as possible. He told defense attorneys Roy Black and Lance Shinder that the doctor’s involvement was minimal, and that no testing had been performed.

The doctor said during his 2023 deposition — fewer than two months before the case was scheduled to go to trial — that the opposite was true. He’d performed 16 hours of interviews and a battery of tests on Mendelsohn but was instructed by Coleman not to provide his findings to the defense attorneys.

Coleman, Loewenstein said, had promised to give them to Black himself. Black told Loewenstein he had received no such files. The deposition ended shortly afterward, as did Loewenstein’s involvement with the case.

“It is clear that, rather than following basic principles of discovery, you were playing games with discovery materials and attempted to use me as your agent in this deception,” Loewenstein wrote in a letter to Coleman one week later.

Loewenstein described Coleman’s conduct in his resignation letter as “wholly false and defamatory” and a “betrayal of trust.” Curley said that letter joined a growing list of things Coleman hid from the defense attorneys, even after the judge ordered him to hand over Loewenstein’s entire file, correspondence included.

When pressed to hand over the materials, Coleman insisted he already had and rebuked Ecclestone’s defense attorneys for what he called their continued “harassment” of the doctor. Curley said Coleman blamed Black for the doctor’s resignation, fabricating the legal grounds Coleman needed to earn a yearlong delay to find another doctor.

“If my expert withdraws at the eleventh hour, and it’s not my fault or unknown to me, you have got to give me a continuance,” Coleman told the judge.

Curley did. By the end of the 13-month delay, which Curley indicated would not have happened had he and Ecclestone’s attorneys known the true cause of Loewenstein’s withdrawal, the 88-year-old Ecclestone’s ability to defend himself against allegations more than 40 years old had diminished considerably.

Plaintiff’s attorney claimed he meant to provide doctor’s letter

Ecclestone’s defense attorneys said they learned the scope of Coleman’s “deception” last month, when, after several attempts to collect Loewenstein’s entire case file from Coleman, the doctor handed it over himself.

“It was unbelievable,” Black said in an interview Thursday, recalling the moment he read Loewenstein’s resignation letter. “The difference was night and day.”

The file included an email from Coleman urging Loewenstein not to share the news of his resignation with the defense counsel until after they met for a mediation hearing to discuss settling the case, or it would “prove disastrous” for Mendelsohn. Coleman told Loewenstein that his client would most likely lose her case.

Mendelsohn’s only recourse then, Coleman wrote, would be to sue Loewenstein “for all the damages she could have been awarded.”

When Curley asked Coleman why he misrepresented Loewenstein’s reason for leaving, the attorney denied doing so. He said then — and again on Friday — that he doesn’t know why Loewenstein withdrew. However, Curley said that days after testifying that it was Black’s fault, Coleman wrote in an email to a potential replacement doctor that Loewenstein withdrew “because I defamed him.”

When asked why he didn’t hand over Loewenstein’s letter after the judge ordered him to share all of his correspondence with the doctor, the attorney said his legal assistant didn’t know it was missing from the file she sent.

Curley found that Wendy Mendelsohn and her husband, Josh, were complicit in Coleman’s so-called deceit. Both had read the doctor’s resignation letter but signed off on Coleman’s request for a delay, in which he blamed Black. Even when faced with Loewenstein’s termination letter and emails, Curley said Josh Mendelsohn continued to blame Black.

This was not the first instance of abuse by Coleman and his clients, Curley wrote. Coleman previously tried to use a video Mendelsohn illegally recorded of Ecclestone to their advantage, despite being forbidden from doing so.

“Despite this court’s desire to see every case tried on its merits, because the plaintiffs’ actions go directly to the integrity of the civil justice system, the Court has no choice but to take severe action in response,” Curley wrote.

Daughter says her memories of abuse surfaced during adulthood

Ecclestone, a business leader and power broker, has been a driving force in Palm Beach County’s development for 50 years. He’s known for building north county residential communities such as PGA National Resort & Spa, Ibis Golf and Country Club, Old Port Cove and Lost Tree Village. He also built the Forum office buildings in West Palm Beach.

He lobbied to get the Palm Beach County Convention Center built and is a founding board member of the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

Mendelsohn sued her father in 2017 after she said he rebuffed her attempts to discuss the memories of inappropriate touching and kissing that surfaced as an adult. According to the complaint, Ecclestone isolated her from the family and told her to sign a confidentiality agreement if she wanted back in its good graces.

Ecclestone said his daughter’s “claims are nothing more than a shake down” — one that, after seven years, has finally ended.

“We faced a lot of hurdles, a lot of challenges, but we never gave up fighting for our client,” Shinder said Thursday. “Truthful administration of justice prevailed.”

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.