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By BILL FREEHLING
John F. Ames and his insurance company paid $100,000 to settle a wrongful-death suit filed by the family of a man he shot and killed in April 2004 in Caroline County, court documents reveal.
The terms of the settlement, which had been sealed, were revealed yesterday after lawyers representing The Free Lance-Star and The Richmond Times-Dispatch successfully argued that it was a public document.
The Richmond law office of John C. Shea, who handled the wrongful death suit for the family of the late Perry Brooks, received $31,523.70 of the total settlement amount for legal services and costs incurred.
The remaining $68,476.30 went to Evelyn Brooks, who is the widow of Perry Brooks, and her two daughters. Evelyn Brooks got $22,825.44, while daughters Kimberley Brooks and Jacqueline Coleman got $22,825.43 each.
The original wrongful death suit filed by the Brooks family asked for $10.4 million. The settlement clears Ames and his insurance company, Northern Neck Insurance Co., from any additional liability or responsibility to the Brooks family.
Ames and Shea did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
Reached at home yesterday, Evelyn Brooks said she doesn't feel like it was a fair settlement, but said she agreed to it partly because she and her family didn't want to face another jury trial.
"We had dealt with so much," she said. "I got tired of dealing with this. It was just too much of a mental strain."
A Caroline jury last year found that Ames acted in self-defense when he shot and killed the 74-year-old Brooks on April 19, 2004, on Ames' Holly Hill cattle farm near Bowling Green. The trial took a week, and Evelyn Brooks said it was a difficult process.
The civil settlement does not address a lien that Ames filed in January 1989 against Evelyn and Perry Brooks.
That was filed after Ames built a fence around his 670-acre farm in the late 1980s. Using an old Virginia law, Ames billed surrounding property owners for half the cost of the fence. The Brooks family never paid the $45,000 they were charged.
The lien filed in Caroline Circuit Court in 1989 asks for the $45,000 plus interest. Depending on the interest rate used for the calculation, that amount could have doubled or even tripled in the past 17 years.
A motion was filed earlier this month on behalf of Evelyn Brooks asking a judge to dismiss that lien and all other companion cases between Ames and Brooks. Richmond attorney J. Thomas O'Brien Jr. filed the motion.
The motion states that an unreasonably long time has passed since the lien was filed, and that key witnesses have died.
Ames filed paperwork in Caroline Circuit Court last week objecting to Evelyn Brooks' request. He argues that it would be a denial of "constitutional and due process rights and a violation of fundamental fairness."
Ames also asks for the expenses he incurred filing the motion, and asks for the matter to be set for trial. Court personnel said no hearing has been set for the latest round of motions.
According to evidence at the September first-degree murder trial, Ames and Perry Brooks feuded for 15 years. Much of the dispute focused on the boundary fence, which Brooks, a vegetable farmer, thought was partly on his land.
One of Brooks' bulls got onto the Ames farm on numerous occasions, including a few days before the shooting. Ames worried about Brooks' diseased bull infecting his Black Angus herd. Ames impounded the bull and told Brooks' son-in-law he could get it back for $500.
Instead, Brooks and two friends came onto the property after they thought Ames had left for his Richmond law office. Ames testified that he saw some trespassers as he left the farm the morning of April 19, 2004, but he didn't think Brooks was among them.
Ames testified that he went to check it out and saw a stranger with the bull. He said he saw Brooks holding a 3-foot stick as he turned to get his cell phone to call police. Ames said he fired his 9 mm pistol five times as Brooks attacked him with the stick.
A key prosecution witness said that Brooks never swung the stick. That witness, Michael Beazley, said Ames fired while Brooks was helpless on the ground.
To reach BILL FREEHLING:
Email: bfreehling@freelancestar.com
