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Judge gives sheriff, bond company 30 days to settle

A Houston County judge gave the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department and Freedom Bail Bonding LLC 30 days to settle their disagreement.

By Michelle Mann
Published: November 09, 2009

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A Houston County judge gave the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department and Freedom Bail Bonding LLC 30 days to settle their disagreement.
“I don’t think this is a legal issue from what I’ve heard here today,” said Houston County Judge Brad Mendheim after a 30-minute hearing in Coffee County Circuit Court Monday.
Freedom Bail Bonding LLC filed the lawsuit against the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Dave Sutton and Jail Administrator Richard Moss Sept. 30, alleging that Sutton and Moss violated a court decree authorizing the company to write bonds at the Coffee County Jail.
The matter was assigned to Mendheim by Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb after Coffee County circuit judges Robert Barr, Jeff Kelley and Thomas Head recused themselves in the lawsuit.
The Sheriff Department was represented Monday by Coffee County’s attorney Joe Cassady, Sr. and the Montgomery law firm of Webb and Eley.
The Freedom company had bonded individuals 116 times for some $269,000 during the time that they claimed they were being barred from the jail, the county’s attorneys said Monday. There was only a 12-day period when Freedom LLC was denied access to the jail and that was due to an investigation into allegations that one of their agents had attempted to bribe a county jail corrections officer.
Freedom Bail Bonding agents Chad Diefenderfer, Jerome L. Cobb Jr., Jerome L. Cobb III and Tamara Cobb are each listed as authorized bonding agents in Coffee County. All but Diefenderfer had been barred from doing business at the jail, Freedom’s attorney Adams Jones said.
The company’s attorneys, Jones and Russ Goodman from the law offices of Jacoby and Meyers of Dothan, asked the court to order Sutton, Moss and sheriff department employees to allow bonding agents to once again sign as surety for jail inmates in the county and Enterprise.
“There is no law that gives the sheriff the authority to do what he is doing,” Jones said.
Freedom asked the court to prohibit all employees of the sheriff department from “disseminating false and malicious information regarding the plaintiff, its agents, members, and/or employees.”
Noting that “it doesn’t seem like there is much of a factual dispute between the parties,” Mendheim gave both sides 30 days to reach an agreement.
“If I don’t hear from you, I will assume you did.”