This is as shady as it comes, but I bet it won't be the last time we see something like this... un-fucking-believable!
Sex, Lawyers and Secrets
Sex, lawyers, secrets at heart of sealed legal case
Web Posted: 06/13/2004 12:00 AM CDT
Maro Robbins and Joseph S. Stroud
Express-News Staff Writers
© 2004, San Antonio Express-News
Professional woman enjoys travel, music, massages, good wine and great food, the personal ad told visitors to the online dating service.
Seeking intelligent, educated man with no strings, for erotic and intellectual relationship.
"I am extremely discreet and require the same," read the ad on AdultFriendFinder.com, which touted itself as the "world's largest sex personals."
Online flirting and secret meetings followed. But before long, discretion gave way to discovery.
Soon the woman's husband was threatening to sue her lovers, exposing their infidelities, and several were paying him thousands of dollars not to go to court ? a gambit that walked a fine line between what some label extortion and what lawyers do every day.
Later, when the matter reached the judicial system, the courts shrouded it in secrecy ? an approach that raises questions about the right to privacy vs. the public's right to know how attorneys can exploit the law.
Orchestrating it all was San Antonio lawyer Ted H. Roberts, who received up to $155,000 from his wife's lovers.
Roberts, a shrewd medical malpractice lawyer, delivered drafts of legal documents and settlement terms to as many as five men, at least some of whom Mary Schorlemer Roberts met through the Internet.
Couched in legal jargon, the documents ? which Mary Roberts apparently helped type ? told the men that Ted Roberts was considering notifying their wives and employers and was ready to ask a judge for permission to further investigate the affairs.
The documents, copies of which were recently obtained by the San Antonio Express-News after its reporters were denied access to the court files, were as remarkable legally as they were sensational.
They ventured toward an archaic area of law that once made adultery fair game for litigation but was erased from the books nearly two decades ago.
Under current Texas law, an unfaithful spouse can be sued for divorce, but suing his or her lover for ruining your marriage no longer is allowed.
Whether Roberts' tactic was legally sound or ethical has been the subject of debate. One of Roberts' former colleagues called it blackmail. Roberts has described the tactic in legal proceedings as legitimate.
He asked the newspaper in a letter Friday to not publish this article, saying it would "inflict catastrophic damage" on his family, and would violate a court order sealing the records.
Hours later, Roberts hand-delivered to the Express-News an appeals court ruling that essentially reaffirmed an earlier decision to seal the files. However, the court did not act on Roberts' request to block the article's publication.
Mary Roberts, the "professional woman" from the ad, said in an interview that the contents of the documents were a private matter, and she defended the validity of her husband's actions.
"There is no doubt in my mind that the legality of everything that has ever been drafted by my husband is absolutely correct," she said.
Asked if she considered his tactic ethical, Roberts, who is her husband's law partner, replied: "I think that if it is legal, if pleadings are legal, they are ethical, would you not agree with me? Certainly our courts would have taken care of things."
Roberts' unorthodox claims may not have violated Texas statutes, or even lawyers' ethics, some legal experts say, but they raise questions of right and wrong that go beyond the law.
Others dismissed what he did as simply "creative lawyering."
Whatever its label, the strategy succeeded.
Court transcripts obtained by the Express-News suggest the men paid at least $75,000 altogether and perhaps as much as $155,000, ostensibly ensuring that their private indiscretions would not become very public lawsuits.
Ted Roberts, insisting that the men bought more than silence, characterized their payments as good deeds.
"I met with these people and I know they felt they were doing the right thing," he said in a 2002 court hearing.
Some of the money ? exactly how much is unclear ? went to a children's charity that Roberts had just registered with the state but not, according to an Internal Revenue Service spokesman, with the federal government.
Mary Roberts aided her husband as he confronted her former lovers ? typing, according to the transcript, parts of the documents that named her and her paramours as potential defendants.
She denied any role in drafting the documents but seemed to acknowledge making a distinction between drafting and typing.
"When you're a lawyer, you certainly do" make such distinctions, she said.
Other documents recently obtained by the Express-News include a handwritten note to one of the men.
"Ted has promised to do nothing with the enclosed petition without first meeting and talking with you and your attorney. I don't know how much of the material you would want to share with (your lawyer) or anyone else.
"I urge you to contact either Ted ... or me ... soon so that this aspect of the entire ordeal will not be prolonged."
The note was signed, "Mary," and was dated Nov. 12, 2001 ? within three weeks of the last intimate e-mail she sent him.
The businessman paid $30,000, Ted Roberts later testified.
Partners in law
Ted and Mary Roberts are the names behind Roberts & Roberts, a local law firm that promotes itself as a vigorous, skilled advocate for its clients.
"We believe in a team approach," says their Web site. "Our team includes experienced attorneys, medical researchers, board certified medical experts, a devoted support staff and you, our client."
The Web site displays a photo of Ted and Mary standing shoulder to shoulder, smiling in front of a shelf filled with law books. He wears a dark jacket and tie; she wears a white blouse and dark jacket with a small medallion necklace.
The Robertses, the site says, "are not in the practice of law for the money, but to pursue justice."
The couple has an 8-year-old son and shares a four-bedroom house valued at $655,800 inside a gated and guarded subdivision in Northwest San Antonio.
Their partnership dates back more than a decade to when she was living in Austin and he was attending law school at the University of Texas.
A native of Wichita, Kan., Ted Roberts already had a master's degree in business administration from UT and a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where, according to his law firm's Web site, he served as student body and Honor Society president.
Mary Roberts, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, had earned bachelor's and master's degrees in nutrition from UT in 1978 and '81, respectively, and had two children from a previous marriage.
She and Ted married in 1990, the year he graduated from law school and around the time she started pursuing the law degree she would obtain with honors three years later from St. Mary's University.
The e-mail flirtations and secret romances took place more than a decade later, in the fall of 2001, according to the documents. Ted Roberts' legal answers to those indiscretions were drafted in November and December of that year.
The documents Ted Roberts prepared were not actual lawsuits. They were petitions invoking Rule 202.1(b), the section of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure that allows lawyers to ask judges for permission to explore whether they have grounds for a lawsuit before actually filing a legal claim.
The petitions each named Mary Roberts and one of her lovers as possible defendants. But the potential claims varied from case to case.