Published December 20, 2006

The letter Vince Illuzzi sent to Julie Jensen in September 2004 could not have been unexpected.

A month before, driving a high-performance car she’d bought for him, Ms. Jensen’s 14-year-old son, Charles Meyer, had smashed into the ledges beside Route 5A in Westmore.

The crash killed his two passengers, Philip Leno, 17, and Norman Woolard, 16.

Mr. Illuzzi, who runs a private law practice besides serving as the part-time state’s attorney of Essex County and a state senator, said he had been retained by Norman Woolard’s mother, Elaine Cashin, and his brothers and sisters.

A lawyer herself, Ms. Jensen could not have been surprised to hear from a lawyer for one of the victims’ families.  But she may have been surprised by the tone of the letter.

Two years later, her lawyers would argue that the letter demonstrated “the tenor of bullying and hostility surrounding this case from its inception.”

Mr. Illuzzi wrote in part:  “The family and the greater community known as the Northeast Kingdom is shocked by not only the tragic death of two boys, but by the circumstances that permitted them to be riding in a 320 horsepower, high performance sports car after you had been warned by at least two individuals that the vehicle was not suited for Charlie and was dangerous on Vermont roads.”

Her action, Mr. Illuzzi continued, “is akin to criminal negligence.”

He’d been in touch with her insurance agent, Mr. Illuzzi told Ms. Jensen, and learned that in addition to her standard automotive liability coverage of $500,000, she had a “personal liability umbrella policy” for an additional $2-million.

“I believe you are underinsured,” Mr. Illuzzi wrote dryly.

The appropriate damages, he said, would range from $3-million to $5-million for the families of each of the dead boys.

That amount, Ms. Jensen’s lawyers would write later, is “far in excess of wrongful death awards in similar cases.”

The letter was not originally part of the civil lawsuit that ultimately developed around the tragedy, and which is due to be the subject of a hearing in U.S. District Court on Friday, December 22.

It was submitted as evidence with one of a pile of pre-trial motions that is rapidly accumulating — motions that reflect the high level of emotion that the tragedy itself generated on and after September 24, 2004, the day the boys died.

The underlying motion is unusual, say its authors, attorneys Marc Heath and Richard Wadhams Jr., both of Burlington.  They represent Ms. Jensen.  It asks U.S. District Judge William Sessions III to set the ground rules for the deposition of Charles Meyer, the underage driver, now 16 and a high school student in Texas.

To avoid surprises during the trial itself, lawyers on both sides of civil cases have the right to question, or depose, the other side’s witnesses in advance.  It’s a routine procedure, and the arrangements are typically made by the attorneys.

But in their motion, the Jensen lawyers tell the judge that their list of ten proposed “ground rules” for the deposition had been flatly rejected by Mr. Illuzzi and Duncan Kilmartin, the Newport attorney and state Representative who represents the family of Philip Leno.

The court needs to step into the argument, the Jensen lawyers wrote, because of “Meyer’s youth, status as an out-of-state student, and the contentious history of this case from its inception.”

In this case, they write, “the natural response of grief and anger has spread into hostility and spite.”

They refer to newspaper articles quoting the victims’ family and their lawyers that “repeatedly characterized Ms. Jensen as callous, reckless, and incompetent.”

And they note that, in charging the 14-year-old driver as an adult with two counts of manslaughter, State’s Attorney Keith Flynn “did something no prosecutor in the nation has ever done.”

After Charles Meyer accepted responsibility for the crash and apologized to the families, the case was moved to juvenile court.

The motion also includes a letter to the editor of the Newport Daily Express in which former state Representative David Bolduc and his wife, Louise, urge the public to pressure Mr. Flynn to bring criminal charges against Ms. Jensen.  The state’s attorney must prosecute Ms. Jensen, the letter said, “to protect our children from the worst kind of parental irresponsibility — giving an immature and inexperienced child a lethal weapon.”  (The same letter was submitted to the Chronicle, but not published.)

And there is an affidavit from Susan Hansen, a private investigator hired by the Jensen legal team, that describes an unpleasant confrontation in Westmore with Norman Woolard’s stepfather, Bill Cashin.

Ms. Hansen said she was parked at the Willoughby Lake Store on September 7 this year when Mr. Cashin pulled in, driving a pickup with a “Norman Woolard” bumper sticker.

“I remember him saying, ‘So you’ve got some questions?  Why don’t you just (expletive) ask me?’” she writes.

When she told him she worked for State Farm Insurance and Marc Heath, Ms. Jensen’s lawyer, she added, he said, “Well, he’s a (expletive) snake, and you’re a snake for working for him.”

The conditions sought by the Jensen team were that lawyers for both families question Charles Meyer at a single deposition that would last no more than one day, scheduled around his school schedule.

Charles would not be asked to view police photos of the accident scene, they add, and there would be no questions about his financial background or his mental or physical health.  And, they added, the session should not be videotaped.

Virtually all the Jensen team’s claims, and the reasonableness of their proposed conditions, are disputed by Mr. Illuzzi and Mr. Kilmartin.  Their response, oddly, includes several documents which speak to Ms. Jensen’s role as a philanthropist.

The Washington Area Women’s Foundation, for example, thanks her on its web site for a $1-million gift to help low-income families headed by women build economic security.

Another refers to the Chasdrew Fund, named after Ms. Jensen’s sons, a “youth philanthropy program in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.”

Through that fund, Ms. Jensen quietly gave modest cash grants to many public libraries, schools, an Abenaki cultural group, a 4-H club, and a least one safe driving program.

Another document drawn from the Internet lists Ms. Jensen as a member of the board of Youth Radio, which helps young people produce original programming.

Through the dense legal language of the motions in the case, one can sense the presence of Ms. Jensen in the background, like an increasingly disturbed bear trying to protect her offspring.

Another motion demands that Mr. Illuzzi and Mr. Kilmartin return any and all copies they have of a report of “neuropsychological examinations of Charles.”

Such information has no place in the civil case, the Jensen lawyers argue, and should never have fallen into the hands of opposing counsel.

They say the report was provided to the state’s attorney, Mr. Flynn, to demonstrate that it was inappropriate to charge Charles Meyer as an adult.

What they don’t know, they write, is how it got to Mr. Illuzzi and Mr. Kilmartin.

Those attorneys say information about Charles Meyer’s mental health is relevant, because it speaks to whether Ms. Jensen should have known it was unsafe to let him drive away in his car, with Mr. Woolard behind the wheel.

That is one of many pre-trial issues expected to come up at Friday’s hearing.  It speaks to an issue that is central to the case — whether a jury might decide that, in addition to any compensatory damages the families might be awarded, Ms. Jensen and her son should pay punitive damages as well.

The lawyers for Ms. Jensen and her son argue that Judge Sessions should rule out punitive damages before the trial.  There is no evidence of the sort of malice toward Norman Woolard and Philip Leno that would justify such damages, they argue.

That motion has been vigorously disputed by Mr. Kilmartin and Mr. Illuzzi.  It is presumably the possibility of a punitive damage award that underlies Mr. Illuzzi’s early estimate of between $3-million and $5-million in damages.

It’s an important question for the two lawyers, as well as the families.  If that estimate stands up, and they collect the one-third contingency fees that are standard in such cases, Mr. Illuzzi and Mr. Kilmartin would each earn between $1-million and $1.7-million.