Jack Nichols: License to Steal???

Former Wake County Commissioner, Jack Nichols and the North Carolina Board of Nursing are under investigation by the North Carolina State Bar, The North Carolina Attorney General's Office, the Governor's Office and the North Carolina State Auditor.

One of the 133 Counts listed in the COMPLAINT is that he stole evidence from a courthouse file.

Probably the most serious charge, however, is that he improperly orchestrated a state agency, the North Carolina Board of Nursing, to hire him as its general counsel to provide litigation services.

Under state law, state agencies receive litigation support from the Attorney General's Office and its many Assistant Attorney Generals, who are paid a salary of around $43,000 a year to represent multiple state agencies.

Nichols convinced the Board of Nursing to pay him a retainer of $5,300 a month for litigation to represent them alone. By our calculations $5,300 a month is $63,600 a year.

Insofar as a state agency must receive special permission (G.S. 147-17) from the Attorney General to hire its own attorney for litigation; AND the Attorney General has to receive permission from the Governor to pass such litigation on to a private attorney, the complaint alleges that Nichols, a former legislative assistant to former Governor Hunt, with knowledge of how to change our laws, convinced the Board to make legislative changes to the Nursing Practice Act that halted the practice of providing a yearly summary of all agency actions to the Governor's Office, which would have alerted the Governor and facilitated the discovery of the massive over payments.

Before the "fix was in", the Board paid its general counsels an hourly rate to advise them during the 3 or 4 yearly board meetings and to review other associated legal questions.

The General Counsel would also advise the Disciplinary wing of the Board on any issues they had questions about. The resulting payments to the attorney was around a couple of thousand dollars a year.

However, Nichols basically took over the prosecution of nurses under review for disciplinary complaints and essentially became a prosecutor who was paid a bounty for each prosecution.

In one glaring case, Nichols insisted on prosecuting a nurse for simply opening up some drawers, looking for some missing medication. He improperly represented the Board all the way through to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of the nurse. However, (in the age of Google) her reputation is forever tarnished, she spent thousands of dollars to defend herself, and the Board looked petty and vindictive.

The only person who won was Jack Nichols, who received $21,248.77 to improperly and unsucessfully litigate a case against an innocent nurse. NOTE: Nichols' own billing records reveal that he still collected $4,579.12 in attorney fees for this illegal litigation, several MONTHS after the Appeals Court had ruled against him and dismissed the case.

Shortly after Jack Nichols facilitated this massive income stream, he began his unsuccessful run for the North Carolina Senate. His campaign recorded over $143,000; much of which was loaned to the campaign by Nichols himself...curious timing...

The statutorily improper retainer agreement was signed in 2007. Therefore, the State of North Carolina, which has a specific law that states a state agency cannot pay its own attorney for attorney fees associated with litigation, nevertheless, has paid Jack Nichols $318,000 [and counting]. Now THAT'S a [law] license to steal! http://outliermagazine.blogspot.com/