Three-year-old Tamarcus Ewing and his mother, Deborah Thompson, both were thrown from the 1994 GEO Tracker in which they were riding as passengers in DeSoto County when the tread on the right rear Cooper tire sheared off from the rest of the tire.
Tamarcus Ewing suffered lifelong physical disabilities. His mother, more tragically, died in the accident that occurred on April 29, 2001.
Less than a year later, the Macon Beacon, an age-old Noxubee County weekly, reported Attorneys Armstrong Walters and Ed Sanders of Columbus, J. C. Patton of Louisville, and the late Bennie Turner, attorney and former state senator from West Point, had filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of sole wrongful death beneficiary Tamarcus Ewing.
Tommy Ewing Jr, the father and guardian of Tamarcus Ewing, was not married to Tamarcus’ mother, Deborah Thompson, a/k/a Deborah Ewing.
Defendants named in the $150 million lawsuit were General Motors Corporation, Suzuki Motor Company, Fitzner Pontiac-Buick-Cadillac of Columbus, Cooper Tire Company, and George’s Tire Service of West Point.
Twenty-three years later, Tamarcus, now 26, and his father and former guardian, Tommy Ewing Jr., continue to ask questions about the known multi-million-dollar settlement that they were never made privy to by any of the many legal and banking professionals involved.
MONEY MATTERS
In March 2002, Tommy Ewing, Jr., then 49, officially became the legal guardian of his son Tamarcus as the court proceedings got underway.
During this same period, Tommy Ewing, Jr. sustained disabling injuries on his job at Bryan Foods and sued Bryan and its parent company Sara Lee for $25 million. He was also destined to fight for his Workman’s Compensation rights while the Deborah Thompson wrongful death case was being heard on behalf of Tamarcus Ewing. But, meanwhile, they had no income.
“They sued for $150 million,” Tommy Ewing Jr. said in a letter of complaint in 2003. “They didn’t tell me how much money my son got or give me any paperwork on it. They didn’t give us anything to live on. They didn’t pay any of my son’s medical bills or even bury his mother.”
Some of the most noteworthy Trustmark Bank files on the account of Tamarcus Ewing, through his father-guardian Tommy Ewing Jr., cover the time span from December 2004 up to and including February 2010.
The December 23, 2004, Notice of Non-Sufficient Funds sent to the Tamarcus Ewing/Tommy Ewing Jr. account shows in handwriting near the top of the text that the account’s current balance was $78,500.57. The account has overdraft protection (OD). And despite checks labeled as overdrafts coming in, the bank routinely pays them off, doesn’t charge the account the expected overdraft fee, and the current balance at the bottom-right corner of the page shows a negative $9,920,749.92. (Yes, negative nine million-plus) as the amount overdrawn on the account. Another example, on March 23, 2007, the bank pays a $500 overdraft, but charges no overdraft fees, and advises the account holder (Tamarcus Ewing), “you needed to deposit $9,893,287.79 into our account.”
That kind of statement of overdrafts, with no overdraft fees charged, and the request to deposit the $9 million-plus into the account, continues on until February 3 and 4, 2010, the dates of the last two files made available to the Jackson Advocate.
MILLIONS OVERDRAWN
Trustmark’s requested deposit from the Ewings on February 3, 2010, is $9,923,782.62. On the very next day, February 4, 2010, the bank alerts the account holders that they need to deposit $19,934,293.46 to cover the total amount of overdrafts and fees. That’s more than a $10 million increase in overdrafts in just one day.
“The whole thing is crazy,” said Tommy Ewing Jr. “ Yeah, the whole thing, like I said. When I started calling back asking about the big money, they decided to remove me from the whole thing. I said y’all can do whatever y’all want, but as long as I’m over whatever I’m over, I’m going to know exactly what we got. There were two settlements – my own from my Worker’s Compensation lawsuit, and the one for Tamarcus for his mother’s wrongful death.
“You’re going to tell me all the big money goes to Tamarcus. But why is all that money in my name? In the Ewing family name? They made two settlements – the Thompson and the Ewing settlement.
Ewing recalled the attorneys who were in on the case from the beginning. “J C. Patton, he’s the one who was acting on behalf of the guardianship. And I remember David Owens and Armstrong Walker, and Ed Sanders. Those are the four lawyers that I remember them and Bennie Turner. They were over that legal stuff from the beginning.”
Ewing said the lawyers tried to get him to sign on to the requests for payments for the expenses needed for his son’s care. But the money for the reimbursements went back to the lawyers, he said.
“I didn’t sign those papers,” Ewing said. “The story is that they paid us the money. But they didn’t pay us the money. Like I told them, I’m not going to sign anything like that. Hell, if we didn’t get the money. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t withdraw nothing. They never told me the actual amount. I kept asking them day after day, but they never did respond back to me.”
GUARDIAN AD LITEM
On November 20, 2009, Attorney Lee Ann Turner of Starkville was appointed Guardian Ad Litem over Tamarcus, who then was still a minor. She would have the responsibility to closely monitor all the financial, residential, educational, and health aspects of the child’s life. His father remained as guardian, but his relationship to his son would now be overseen and guided, when necessary, by the Guardian Ad Litem.
J. C. Patton, the lawyer for the guardianship since the initial lawsuit in the wrongful death case, signed on to the judge’s order appointing the new Guardian Ad Litem.
During a court hearing in early 2010, the amount of $7 million came up for discussion and was supposed to be in the Ewing account. Court records indicate that the money was placed in an AIG account under the authority of the court.
Tommy Ewing said that he had a checkbook – a deluxe checkbook – from Trustmark Bank that had $10 million in the account.
Tommy Ewing said at the time: “I have a checkbook with about $10 million in it, with my name on it, but I can’t write a check and buy nothing. The bank told me to bring the checkbook back, but I didn’t. This is my money, and I cannot spend none of it.”
His constant questioning of the actions taking place between some of the lawyers, said Tommy Ewing, while presumably acting for him and his son, led to the court appointing Guardian Ad Litem, Lee Ann Turner, on November 20, 2009.
With Lee Ann Turner coming into the picture as Guardian Ad Litem, Tommy Ewing remained insistent that he would not give up the checkbook.
“Lee Ann Turner told Judge Colom about $9 million and said that there was also $7 million in the AIG account, and that it was in Trustmark Bank. They had moved all that money from Trustmark Bank to Starkville and put it in the CB&S Bank in Starkville,” he said. “Judge Colom wanted me to give the checkbook to Patton. And I told her that I wasn’t going to give it to him, because it was in my name. Why should I give my checkbook up? But when Chokwe Lumumba came in as my lawyer, I gave it to him. That’s how they got it back because I gave it to Chokwe.”
Ewing said he never got an accounting from Lumumba or Roy Perkins, Lumumba’s co-counsel in this case. “No, they never gave me an accounting of what happened to that money and stuff.”
Tommy Ewing said that he wound up with $350,000 instead of the $10 million that had been in the account before.
“That’s all that was in there,” he said. “I kept asking Patton, ‘Where’s the millions at?’ But they never could tell me.”
NEW LAWYERS
In January 2010, it was obvious to Louisville business owner William Muhammad that his friend Tommy Ewing needed some legal help on which he could depend. It was Muhammad who approached the late Chokwe Lumumba to take up the fight for Ewing and his son who seemed besieged from all directions by lawyers and bankers who did not have their best interests at heart.
In his January 2010 letter to Lumumba, Muhammad wrote: “Judge Colom told him (Tommy Ewing Jr.) that she put his son’s money up in a trust fund. But Tommy’s money has been put in several banks under his father’s name (Tommy Ewing Sr.), and his father has been dead 5 or more years…. He just needs someone to help him, they are taking advantage of him because he is illiterate, but he has good common sense to know that they tried to take advantage of him.”
Lumumba took up the Ewing case beginning February 25, 2010, with Roy A. Perkins as co-counsel. Tommy Ewing Jr. remained his son’s legal guardian, although the Guardian Ad Litem and the counsel for the guardianship, J. C. Patton, retained their authority in the case.
CASE CLOSED
By December 1, 2003, the case of Tamarcus Ewing vs. General Motors Corporation et al was “fully compromised and settled.” And the complaint was declared to be “fully and finally dismissed with prejudice as to all defendants”. And it was signed by Circuit Judge J. Howard of Noxubee. That meant there could be no appeal or future issues following this decree. Attorney J. C. Patton signed on behalf of the plaintiff, Tamarcus Ewing, the sole wrongful death beneficiary of Deborah Ewing (legal name Thompson).
Ten years later, on December 9, 2013, Tommy Ewing, with the support of his counsel Roy Perkins, asked David Sanders of the Mitchell, McNutt and Sams Law Office for the documents “regarding the settlement between Cooper Tire and Rubber Company/George’s Tire Service” and himself on behalf of Tamarcus Ewing. David Sanders advised the letter-writer to ask the lawyer who handled the matter. That was Ed Sanders, of the same law firm, who was one of the original four lawyers suing on behalf of the Ewings.
David Sanders explained, nevertheless, that the matter was settled in 2004 and was retired in 2005. “We are required to maintain litigated file documents for a period of 7 years, and our records indicate this file was destroyed early this year (2013).”
The Jackson Advocate earlier in the week made calls to the offices of three other key attorneys in the case but received no responses by press deadline. These were: Roy A. Perkins, attorney for Tommy Ewing, along with the late Chokwe Lumumba; J. C. Patton, attorney for the guardianship of Tamarcus Ewing; and Lee Ann Turner, former Guardian Ad Litem for Tamarcus Ewing and is now the judge of the Oktibbeha County court.
Lumumba became mayor of Jackson in 2013 and died in office in February 2014. His co-counsel in the Ewing case, Roy A. Perkins, still has his law practice and is still in contact with the Ewing family.
Attorney Perkins had also sent inquiries to J.C. Patton on behalf of both Tamarcus and Tommy Ewing regarding “an arbitration session” in the law office of Bennie Turner, another of the four original lawyers in the lawsuit (The late Bennie Turner was not related to Judge Lee Ann Turner).
In a lengthy Sunday, September 15, interview with the Jackson Advocate, Tommy Ewing said the late Bennie Turner had approached him during the early stages of litigation with an offer of $2 million as a settlement in the wrongful death case. Ewing said he declined the offer.
KEPT SECRETS
Lowndes Chancery Judge Dorothy Colom scheduled hearings on the settlement of claims for November 17, 2003. While indicating that the “estate of Deborah Thompson and the guardianship of Tamarcus Ewing have settled personal injury claims with Defendants,” the court said all parties had agreed “to seal and keep confidential” all exhibits and evidence of the settlement amount terms and conditions.
During the entire period of the court proceedings regarding this case, from March 2002 until as late as 2021, the amount of money in the settlement had been a well-kept secret – that is, a secret kept from the plaintiffs, Tommy Ewing and his son Tamarcus, who are the beneficiaries.
While still having no free and clear access to the settlement funds, Tommy Ewing began to receive payments needed for his care of his son. A number of certificates of deposit were being sent to bank accounts under his name, although he had no clear understanding of these transactions.
Tommy Ewing said Tuesday that he had nothing to do with a list of transactions filed on April 10, 2008, where four certificates of deposit of $90,000 each were sent to depositories at BancorpSouth in West Point; to Cadence Bank in West Point; to Regions Bank in Columbus; and to Regions Bank/Am South also in Columbus.
Another account was set up at Renaissance Bank in West Point to handle the excess amounts over the $90,000 being set up for the CDs. The amount for the Renaissance Bank account totaled $52,325.50. Ewing said he did not sign the papers to set up the Renaissance Bank account.
“I didn’t sign those papers,” Ewing said. “The story is that they paid us the money. But they didn’t pay us. And like I told them, I’m not going to sign anything like that. Hell, if we didn’t get the money, I wouldn’t do it.” It was because his son was left disabled in the accident that the lawyers set up the special AIG account for him, he was told.
“They kept telling me all the money was for Tamarcus. But they wouldn’t tell me how much money there was. Just give me the bottom line. They wouldn’t give that to me. Chokwe told me to ask Judge Colom how much was in that case. Judge Colom gave me the same papers that Patton gave me.”
This stalemate over money was happening before the appointment of Attorney Lee Ann Turner to be the guardian ad litem on Nov. 20, 2009.
ISSUES GO ON
Tamarcus Ewing became 21 years of age in 2018 and as an adult is in control of all his life’s business, though some estate issues remain. He still has not been given a full accounting of the settlement in his mother’s wrongful death case, he says.
Tommy Ewing says his Workmen’s Compensation case was never fully resolved. Even today, some legal issues are still being contested. He recently consulted with a new attorney regarding the case.
