Adult Nightclub Attorneys to Finally Get Their Due

JACKSON, MS—Big companies delaying payments on their receivables is a big enough problem that even The New York Times is writing about it—but not being paid your due for 90 or 120 days is chickenfeed compared to how long First Amendment attorney Luke Lirot and co-counsel Chris Ganner have waited for the city of Jackson to get around to settling its legal debt to them. It all started back in 2006, when Jackson's (illegally gun-toting) Mayor Frank Melton decided that he wanted get rid of all of the city's topless bars, and one of his targets was Babes Showclub, which police officers shut down on March 11, 2006, allegedly because the club didn't have a valid adult entertainment license. Trouble was, Babes had applied for that license just as it was opening, but the city's Signs and Licenses Division failed to act on the application for several months, instead issuing temporary licenses to the club—an extra-legal action which has no basis in the city's ordinances. Fortunately, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate recognized that flaw in the city's plan, granted a restraining order sought by the club, and ruled that the club could reopen about a month later—but the club's owners sued the city, not only for Babes' lost income but for the income lost in trying to reestablish itself as a going concern. The case didn't go to trial until 2009, and after hearing evidence and argument for two days, Judge Wingate ruled that the city had in fact violated the rights of Babes' owners, J&B Entertainment, and awarded them $84,574.36 in damages—plus costs and attorney fees. Apparently, the city coughed up the $84K reasonably quickly, but the costs and attorney fees? Well, not so quickly. In facxt, it was just yesterday that the City Council agreed to pay the Florida-based Lirot $32,895, and local counsel Ganner $5,495. So why did it take six years for the attorneys to collect? "This is an order of a federal judge," was all City Attorney Monica Joiner would say about the affair. However, there's a good chance the delay was one of the legacies of Frank Melton, who died on May 7, 2009 after having been struck from the mayoral election ballot due to his alleged lack of a residence within the city. It's unclear if the Babes trial had been held before his death, but about two years earlier, an arrest warrant had been issued for Melton because he had accompanied police on more nightclub raids while carrying an "unofficial" Jackson police badge. Anyway, with yesterday's City Council resolution, the nine-year-old case of J&B Entertainment v. City of Jackson seems finally to have reached its conclusion.