A Palm Beach County judge threw out a lawsuit that alleged developer E. Llwyd Ecclestone Jr. sexually molested his daughter when she was a child.
Wendy Walker Mendelsohn and her husband, Joshua Mendelsohn, sued her father in 2017, alleging he abused her when she was 10 years old and that her older brother also molested her around the same age.
Her father and brother denied the allegations. Wendy is the youngest of Ecclestone’s four adult children.
Ecclestone, who is in his late 80s, is known for developing residential communities in Palm Beach County that include PGA National Resort & Spa and Lost Tree Village, as well as the Forum office buildings in West Palm Beach.
This week, Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge G. Joseph Curley sided with defense attorney Roy Black’s arguments, agreeing that the plaintiffs and their attorneys “demonstrated a deliberate and contumacious” disregard for the court, that they acted in bad faith and perpetrated a fraud, according to the order.
The fraud was based on issues with the plaintiffs’ former expert, Dr. Richard Lowenstein, the order states. Curley wrote in his dismissal that the plaintiffs and their lawyers violated the judge’s orders, and misled the court and the defense attorneys about Lowenstein’s withdrawal from the case so that they could obtain a continuance that resulted in a 13-month delay of the court proceedings.
The Mendelsohns’ attorney, Roderick Coleman of Coleman & Associates, said he will be filing a motion for rehearing for his clients. If it is denied, he will appeal the ruling.
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“There’s a lot of misstatements of fact in the order,” he said. Coleman said that he did not present false information to the court, calling the case and its outcome a “bizarre situation.”
Judge Curley’s order states that last month, Wendy and Joshua Mendelsohn admitted they had read Lowenstein’s withdrawal letter before they signed a motion of continuance, and that Lowenstein withdrew solely because of the plaintiffs’ counsel. But the motion of continuance, signed by the Mendelsohns, blamed defense attorney Black for Lowenstein’s withdrawal, according to the order.