Lawyer Who Sued “Bubba The Love Sponge” Framed
BY BUDDY NEVINS
The raunchy radio broadcaster Bubba The Love Sponge connected to an outrageous breach of legal ethics?
Bubba The Love Sponge
Bubba, birth name Todd Clem, has been involved in all kinds of foolishness on his former Sirius satellite gig and on his long-running Tampa show.
A rival shock jock Todd “MJ” Schnitt felt Bubba went too far one day and sued him for defamation.
Here is where it got strange:
Bubba’s lawyers with the help of the police set up the DUI arrest of Schnitt’s lawyer Charles Campbell Jr.
That’s according to Pinellas County State Attorney’s Office, appointed by Gov. Rick Scott to look into Campbell’s arrest as special prosecutors.
In what the Tampa Tribune called a “scathing 24-page report,” prosecutors detailed how Bubba’s lawyers plotted to get Campbell arrested and thus disqualified from the defamation case. They had tried and failed to get Campbell thrown off the case several times in court.
“There appears to exist an animosity between the lawyers, which went beyond typical advocacy,” the report concluded.
Campbell was at a downtown Tampa steakhouse bar on January 23 when he was approached by paralegal Melissa Personius. She worked at the firm Adams and Diaco, which served as Bubba’s legal team.
She bought Campbell a shot of Southern Comfort. The lawyer had four or five more vodka drinks while she had four or five glasses of wine and a shot of liquor.
Prosecutors later found that Personius exchanged dozens of text messages and phone calls with Adams and Diaco lawyers that evening.
When questioned, prosecutors said that Personius had “little or no memory as to the substance of these communications – not even a general recollection of the subject matter.”
As they were leaving, Campbell was concerned about Personius driving home and offered her cash to take a cab. She insisted he move her car to another lot several blocks away.
Campbell finally agreed to her demand. Minutes after he started the car, he was pulled over by a cop.
Later it was discovered that the cop had exchanged 92 text messages with a lawyer at Adams and Diaco who was the cop’s personal friend. The cop later testified that the lawyer was updating him repeatedly on Campbell’s activity while he “essentially lay in wait” for the lawyer to emerge from the steakhouse.
Lawyers at Adams and Diaco refused to testify or took the Fifth.
The report by the State Attorney ends by dropping the charge against Campbell because the “pattern of communication between these parties that would leave in any reasonable mind as to their motives and intentions…There appears to be a collaboration involving Personius,” lawyers at Adams and Diaco and Tampa police “to effectuate the arrest of Campbell.”
The two radio jocks in court
And Bubba. He was uncharacteristically quiet during the two hours I listened to his show in the car the day after the report was issued (I was in Tampa.).
Maybe he was muzzled by a mediation agreement he signed while the investigation of Campbell’s arrest was taking place. Bubba agreed not to talk about Schnitt and his family and the suit was dropped.
But this one shouldn’t be over for the lawyer involved in the attempted frame. There is no place for this kind of conduct by officers of the court. The Florida Bar needs to take action.
August 2nd, 2013 at 4:13 pm
Holy SH!T, this sound like a Rothstein set up. Are you sure this didn’t happen in Broward?
This guy should be disbarred.
August 2nd, 2013 at 4:29 pm
For lawyers like Sam Fields who wonder why the public has a low opinion of them and their sleazy tricks, read this.
August 2nd, 2013 at 7:35 pm
Business as usual. Nothing to see here. Just lawyers being lawyers. Nothing will happen to them.