Judge says Bush can be deposed in SMU suit

On April 17, 68th District Judge Martin J. Hoffman of Dallas issued an order compelling former President George W. Bush to testify in a deposition. According to Hoffman's order, Vodicka and intervenor Robert Tafel allege in Gary Vodicka, et al. v. Southern Methodist University, et al. that SMU and the school's emissaries were involved in a plan to take over condominiums near the school — one of which Vodicka owned — because the university needed land for the presidential library. SMU, the judge wrote in his order, has claimed that it purchased the condos for the purpose of providing university housing. Hoffman denied Tafel’s motion to depose former First Lady Laura Bush. Bush and the George W. Bush Foundation will file a petition for a writ of mandamus, says their lawyer John Martin, a partner in Thompson & Knight in Dallas. Martin also represents Laura Bush. In his order, Hoffman stressed that the previous deposition testimony of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, now a partner in Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, contributed to his decision to agree with the plaintiffs and order that they be allowed to depose Bush. Hoffman wrote in his 12-page order that Miers was among the individuals who "expressed in a deposition an inability to remember critical details about" an August 2002 meeting that included Bush, Miers, Dallas oilman Ray Hunt and SMU President Gerald Turner. Hoffman noted that the group met to discuss the possibility of SMU becoming the site of the Bush Presidential Library. But Hoffman wrote that several times during her six-hour deposition Miers expressed her inability to recollect the meeting. Noting that during their depositions Hunt and Turner also had trouble remembering details of the meeting, Hoffman concluded: "Plaintiffs have attempted to obtain this information through other means (namely the depositions of Miers and Hunt) and have been unsuccessful. . . . Plaintiffs have shown that there is no other likely sources of this information, other than from the deposition of George W. Bush." Miers' assistant refers a telephone call seeking comment to Locke Lord spokeswoman Julie Gilbert, who refers all questions to SMU and its counsel W. Mark Lanier, founder of The Lanier Law Firm in Houston. Lanier says despite the judge's order, he believes that during her deposition Miers recalled some of the significant events of the 2002 meeting and Hunt and Turner recalled most of it. Lanier also represents Hunt and Turner. Martin, Bush's lawyer, believes the 2002 meeting is irrelevant to the litigation. "We respectfully disagree with the judge. This is a title dispute. The plaintiffs are only trying to depose the [former] president as a publicity stunt. The conversations that took place that day are unrelated to the title dispute." But plaintiff Vodicka, a Dallas solo who is representing himself in the suit, is elated the judge has opened the door for him to question the former president. "Bush's friends and advisers, by trying to protect him in their depositions, set him up for his deposition," Vodicka says. Larry Friedman of Dallas' Friedman & Feiger, who represents Tafel, calls Hoffman's decision "the most important historic event in Dallas since the JFK assassination." Friedman says it shows that in Dallas no man, even a former president, rises above the law.
-- Miriam Rozen