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Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2010 > February > 05
Friday, February 5, 2010
Convicted ethnic intimidator and others sued in connection with Jefferson Twp. arson
DAYTON — A man serving a prison sentence for ethnic intimidation, as well as several members of his family, are being sued by an insurance company because of an arson that destroyed a Jefferson Twp. house.
Earl L. McLearran, 40, is in London Correctional Institution, serving a four-year sentence which ends in 2012, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday Feb. 2 in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court by Cincinnati Insurance Company and MV Communites, seeks damages of $101,000 from an Aug. 21, 2008 house fire at 322 Albers Drive, which was owned by MV Communities.
The house was the home of Saundra Ballard, who is black. McLearran is white and lived at 304 Albers.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested McLearran on July 31, 2008, after he was accused of yelling a racial slur at neighbor Saundra Ballard’s son and threatening to burn her house because he didn’t want blacks in the neighborhood.
While Ballard and her sons testified against McLearran before a grand jury, her house was set afire. A teen was charged with delinquency by reason of arson.
The lawsuit lists 11 defendants, six of them minors. Four of the five adults, including McLearran, are listed as defendants individually and as guardians of the minors.
Some of the defendants are described as relatives of McLearran. Nine of them are accused of setting the fire, according to the lawsuit. None of the adult co-defendants besides McLearran have been criminally charged in the case, according to Montgomery County Common Pleas Court records.
McLearran arranged the arson while he was in the Montgomery County Jail, speaking to a co-defendant, the lawsuit states. Another co-defendant, identified as a cousin who had recently been released from incarceration “may have acted in commission of the arson as a favor” to McLearran, “for not testifying against him related to drug charges.”
The lawsuit states that the defendants acted to get revenge on Ballard and her family for McLearran’s ethnic intimidation case and for an altercation between Ballard’s children and some of the minor defendants.
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Blue Dog scammers sued by insurance company
DAYTON - An insurance company has filed a lawsuit against a former Oakwood couple convicted of illegally diverting $280,000 from a local advertising agency.
Cincinnati Insurance Company filed the lawsuit Tuesday, Feb. 2 against Todd D. Wilkerson, a former Blue Dog Productions employee, and his wife, Alison L. Wilkerson, who worked for the firm as an account executive on a contract basis. The Wilkersons now live in Birmingham, Ala.
The Wilkersons both pleaded no contest in September 2008 to engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, a first-degree felony, and to two third-degree felonies: aggravated theft and money laundering.
Under Ohio law, a first-degree felony is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A third-degree felony is punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
Under the plea agreement, Alison Wilkerson was placed on probation. Todd Wilkerson was sentenced to three years in prison, though prosecutors agreed not to object to judicial release after six months. Wilkerson has since been released from prison, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
The lawsuit seeks $279,000 in damages, and states that the company paid nearly $193,000 to Blue Dog Productions, which is co-owned by prominent Dayton attorney Mike Dyer.
The Wilkersons were not ordered to pay restitution, because under Ohio law, restitution cannot be paid to a third-party, in this case the insurance company. At the time of Todd Wilkerson’s sentencing, Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Barbara P. Gorman said she disagreed with that.
“I think you should be paying restitution,” Gorman said. “But that’s not my call.”
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