Hearing set for motions against litigious pair

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A Dane County judge will hear arguments Sept. 8 whether to again find a pair of litigious Madison residents in contempt for disobeying his order.

Judge John Markson told Rodney Rigsby and Quincy Neri in July that their litigation “needs to stop now.” He permanently enjoined them from continuing to litigate against the defendants, which includes attorneys representing those the pair had sued in previous cases.

The lawsuit in question has already been dismissed, but Rigsby and Neri continued to serve paperwork on defendants, including default judgment motions for more than $100 million on insurance companies. That prompted the attorneys in the case to again ask Markson to find the pair in contempt of court, and to throw the pair in jail as a sanction.

“I am sure I don’t need to specifically illustrate for the Court how absolutely frustrating it is to continue dealing with these issues even after Your Honor’s crystal clear warning on July 14, 2014,” Attorney Cathleen Dettman of Haley Palmersheim SC, Madison, wrote in her letter attached to the motion. “Not only are the default motions a patent violation of this Court’s recent order, they are practically incoherent, rife with factual inaccuracies and outright fabrications, and most certainly without any basis in law whatsoever.”

Neri, a glassblower and painter, and Rigsby, a cartoonist and business owner, along with children’s entertainer Catherine “The Banana Lady” Conrad, have made a name for themselves by amassing 27 lawsuits against 108 defendants, with many defendants being sued more than once in state and federal court. Several of the defendants are attorneys and insurance providers who represented other people in prior cases the trio brought.

Most of the cases stem from copyright and trademark claims – as the trio owns dozens of them – though state and federal judges repeatedly throw out the suits. The trio is on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in judgments, attorney’s fees and sanctions, with the majority of that being unpaid.