JAMAICAN-born Florida attorney David Rowe has filed bankruptcy, effectively frustrating court-ordered sanctions against him in the continuing Daryl Vaz hate mail case.

Rowe filed his motion on January 29, 2015 in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida at the height of what seems to be a cat-and-mouse game that began with a lawsuit accusing him of authoring an e-mail that defamed Vaz and several high-profile businessmen and politicians in Jamaica.

Rowe, who has had at least three orders against him in Florida courts and is facing mounting legal sanctions — including US$51,347 awarded on January 13, 2014 — asserted that he earns gross income of US$30,000 annually from his unincorporated law practice at Brickell Avenue in Miami.

This compares with annual federal minimum wage earnings of US$15,080, based on $7.25 an hour.

He was warned in court documents that: “The penalty for a fraudulent claim is a fine of up to US$500,000 or imprisonment for up to five years, or both.”

The embattled attorney denied being the author of the widely distributed hate mail over which Vaz, the former Jamaican information minister, and Rainforest Seafoods Limited principal Brian Jardim filed the lawsuit in Florida.

But a lower court found that a computer which his accusers said he used in the creation of the e-mail had been wiped clean, and the court awarded costs against Rowe.

Rowe’s appeal to the District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida Fourth District to quash the earlier court’s order for costs against him, including an award for him to pay attorneys’ fees, was thrown out on January 7, 2015.

He was scheduled on January 30 to give evidence of his assets and income for the satisfaction of the judgement, after having failed to attend a previous hearing.

The libel suits were first filed against Rowe, son of the famous Judge Ira Rowe, on April 9, 2012 on grounds that the attorney circulated e-mail under the pseudonym ‘Paul Azan’, in which allegations of corruption were made against several Jamaican politicians and businessmen, including Vaz and Jardim.

The e-mail, which was globally circulated on the Internet on March 22 and 23, 2012, also allegedly defamed former prime ministers P J Patterson and Bruce Golding; former Finance Minister Audley Shaw; former Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton; and Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, chairman of the Sandals group, which includes the Jamaica Observer.

The court ruled against Rowe after he failed to produce the computer on which the libel was allegedly created. In a separate judgement, Rowe was ordered to pay attorneys’ fees after he improperly removed the case from a state court to a federal court just prior to a scheduled state court hearing.

The libel suit claimed that Rowe, “hiding behind pseudonyms… fabricated and published a document purported to be an official US Law Enforcement Memo to Turks and Caicos Special Investigation and Prosecutions Team”. The document made “direct accusations of bribery, money laundering, corruption, and close affiliations with a notorious convicted drug lord”, the complainants said in court papers.

Rowe denied being the author of the document in question and filed an unsuccessful motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Vaz and Rainforest requested that Rowe produce, for copying and inspection, the computer he used during the March 22 and 23, 2012 time frame. Rowe first agreed then failed to do so, causing the court to make a second order.

When Rowe eventually produced a computer on July 18, 2012, a forensic expert for the complainants told the court that it was not the computer Rowe had used and that the accused had produced a new computer that, among other things, “had no user activity on it until May 2012, was not online or capable of sending e-mail or connecting to the Internet until after the lawsuit was filed, and had a new operating system installed on it in June 2012”.

Rowe then produced a second computer which the forensic expert testified to the court had been wiped clean, despite Rowe’s obligation to preserve the computer unaltered. The expert also testified that software used by advance computer users was utilised to delete or alter information on Rowe’s computer.

In addition, he said this second computer had a new operating system installed on it on September 12, 2013.

In filing bankruptcy, Rowe did not make any reference to the Vaz hate mail case in which the claimants are represented by Jennifer Glasser and Michael Marsh of Akerman LLP. Rowe is represented by Jamaican-born Florida attorney David Brown and Rosemarie Robinson.