Lawyers representing a comedian suing national litigation firm Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani for malpractice, will ask a Fulton County judge to throw out the firm’s defenses in a legal malpractice lawsuit as a sanction this week. 

The motion to strike Gordon Rees’ answer and declare the firm in default is set to be argued before Judge Eric Richardson Wednesday. Attorneys for plaintiff Terry Hodges say Gordon Reese attorneys, including named partner Roger Mansukhani, changed their stories over whether they searched for relevant texts, emails or chats tied to claims the firm concealed a conflict of interest from Hodges when it represented him in the underlying litigation.

The texts were sought to bolster Hodges’ claim that Gordon Rees—which represented him in a dispute with Netflix and fellow funnyman Chris Tucker—concealed that it was also representing Netflix, even after it learned it had a conflict.

Gordon Rees’ lawyers responded that the issue is a red herring designed to “avoid a determination of the merits” of the case and that the reason none of the texts from 2015 were found or searched for is because the lawyers in question either do not use texting for work or routinely delete any texts.

Hodges’ filed the underlying lawsuit in 2015, claiming that Tucker owed him for years of writing and production tasks and had promised him co-producer credit for Netflix’s 2015 “Chris Tucker Live.”

Hodges’ complaint said the firm only disclosed the conflict after it had engineered Netflix’s dismissal from the suit and accepted thousands of dollars in fees before dumping Hodges.

Tucker countersued, and the comics settled their dispute confidentially. 

Hodges sued Gordon Rees, Mansukhani and firm lawyers Charles Mulrain, Richard Sybert and Joni Flaherty in 2016. 

In their motion for sanctions, Hodges’ lawyers said the firm’s now-former lawyers wrote to the court in 2018 that the defendants “adhered to the court’s directive and asked every law firm partner and every named defendant to check personal devices for messages about Terry Hodges” and that none were found.

But in depositions earlier this year, it said Sybert and Flaherty testified they hadn’t searched their personal devices. Mansukhani said he couldn’t recall, then later said he remembered searching in 2017. 

Hodges’ motion argues that the texts should have been preserved because they were part of his client file.

“Hodges is extremely prejudiced by the destruction because the texts are the crown jewels of evidence of intent and wilfulness in Gordon Rees’ treatment of their client,” wrote his lawyers, Wallace Neel of New Yorks’ Law Office of Wallace Neel and Roswell solo Warren Hinds. 

Gordon Rees’ response said there was “no willful disregard of the court’s orders (or any disregard at all),” and that the motion is meritless.

“Defendants searched available devices,” it said.

“Where devices from 2015 were not available, defendants employed alternate means to confirm no text messages exist and no text messages did exist,” said the filing by the firm’s current counsel, Carlock, Copeland & Stair partners Joe Kingma and Mark Lefkow.