Palm Beach author tied to ex-Ravens player and Bank of America litigation releases eye-catching videos

Flamboyant Southern writer TJ Fisher takes aim at the past, present and future — releasing a series of videos chronicling a storied 2006 post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans surprise party held in her honor.

Following that  the Crescent City commemorative occasion, the now-six-year legal epic erupted, snagging Fisher in the crosshairs.

Two-time NFL Pro Bowler and Ravens “hero” Michael McCrary, a man who claimed in numerous court proceedings to be Fisher’s business partner, but who Fisher adamantly insists was never her partner, is clearly visible as a guest in the 12-part sequenced video Fisher entitles “The TJ Fisher Party (Parts 1-12) New Orleans, Behind the Walls and Gates.”

Since “The” 2006 party, Fisher says  McCrary and his legal posse have stalked and dragged her through 13 courts, to the tune of millions of dollars. But bouncing back from the $60-million chase like a spirited redheaded scribe, part-Lucille Ball and part-Bozo the Clown Bop Bag punching toy, Fisher is still fighting.

“THE pink Cadillac celebration video, a time of triumph over sorrow, down in New Orleans,” Fisher says, “begins to undrape a long-buried portrait of untold stories behind the story of McCrary’s $60-million dollar lawsuits.”

Fisher says she will continue to unravel and illuminate the layers of “sodden truths” and “true colors” hidden beneath the “mud.”

Court records reflect McCrary’s 2007 multi-tentacle lawsuit against Fisher inevitably spawned Fisher’s 2011 major lawsuit against Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). Likewise gridiron defensive end McCrary, who news reports cite as battling his own legal, financial, health and marital woes, also sued BofA in 2008.

On paper, a lifeless tangled-twist trail of Louisiana LLCs weave the spectacularly cobwebby Fisher-McCrary-BofA tale, but the real players that anchor the Byzantine legal-drama saga is its out-sized larger-than-life colorful characters.

Serving up a dramatic up-close-and-personal online glimpse into an atypical world, blurred by lingering rumor, gossip, innuendos, scandal and misrepresentation, Fisher connects the past with the present by providing  introductions and voice over narration to each video.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” Fisher declares, quoting William Faulkner.

Fisher says her fly-on-the-wall  peak behind the  gates, when nobody thinks anyone is looking, provides flickering insight into “The Plaza Tower Matrix” — how she dubs the storyline.

“I’m referring to the toxic web of vicious litigation, infighting, greed and an unlikely host of opponents at odds after Hurricane Katrina’s fallout revealed ugly gnashes and sordid underbellies,” she explains, “it’s a deeply marinated story positioned to ink into movie script.” Fisher remains centered at the story foreground.

The nightmare-turned-fairytale-turned-nightmare story is a bust-out Hollywood-worthy tale. The big storyboard themes span New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, devastation, destruction, a jinxed skyscraper, millions of profits, lawsuits, courts, big name attorneys, blue ruin, shadowy artifices, partner-against-partner, ego, greed, revenge, spouses, power, domination, corruption, tragedy, deception, hedge funds, legal and human drama. “This juggernaut of Hades is a pathetic ode to the carnage of power, avarice and vengeance,” Fisher adds. “So who is the real winner here?”

Voraciously pursued for half a dozen years through a baker’s dozen of courts in three states by McCrary, with Fisher snared into a bitterly varnished sweeping legal odyssey, a warfare of unimaginable proportions —  she intends to illuminate  the minefield-filled landscape of toxic torched-earth scandalous lawsuits and $33-million default judgments. She assures she just caught her third wind. Citing Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” anthem for her trials and tribulations, turnstile litigation and planned movie-making, Fisher calls herself a “Swamp Empress” poet-warrior fighter. And she has the tape to prove it.

“My real-life videos begin to give a face and a voice to my story, connecting the dots, of what really happened.” She says many notable faces appear, temporally floating across YouTube’s quicksilver screen; faces she has already sketched into a dream “wish-list” of casting choices for screenland story adaptation.

In addition to being an award-winning writer, Fisher is also a producer and director. Direct-stare eyed and gutsy, with a touch of her trademark dark humor, she seems fortified and resilient, expressive and serious.

Rendered voiceless for many years, Fisher seems to  once again enjoy finding her voice. Earlier in the Fisher-McCrary legal Armageddon, Fisher and her attorneys were barred from speaking or participating in Baltimore courtroom proceedings — as were all defendants in the case and their legal counsel — before the issuance of the original $33-million default judgment was levied.

Beginning in 2007, a year after Fisher’s much-ballyhooed “The Party,” a party her husband hosted on her behalf, McCrary and his Baltimore-based powerhouse legal team then launched a blistering legal attack against Fisher, for years on end.

A soulful writer of New Orleans culture but no shrinking violet, Fisher refused to cave , as she says she was taught to “never give in to bullies,” but in-depth Fisher-McCrary court records reveal McCrary’s “winning player’s home-court team” always led the gory clash a football field ahead. At times Fisher even represented herself in court.

After “Camp McCrary,” as Fisher calls it, secured a relentless onslaught of one-sided wins, cementing unrecoverable legal-touchdown knockout punches against Fisher, last April underdog Fisher finally fought back.

West Palm Beach attorney and Roy Black protégé Timothy W. Schulz, a former Atlantic City police officer and crime scene forensic expert turned corporate attorney, stepped in to spearhead Fisher’s separate legal action against BofA. Schulz continues as Fisher’s lead counsel in the BofA case, gearing up for the forthcoming high-profile David and Goliath courtroom battle.

Surviving McCrary’s fierce legal-warfare battering and “Donnybrook spectacles,” which Fisher likens to a vicious pummeling take-down, she says she struggled to successfully push through and rise above a crushing landslide of private sorrows, harrowing losses, foreclosures and public humiliations.

At one point her former historic Bourbon Street home was raided by the Orleans Parish civil Sheriff, when McCrary enforced his $33.3-million default judgment against Fisher and had her possessions publically removed by movers, art appraisers and uniformed officers. That seizure was later overturned, and a court order commanded everything be put back in place and pictures hung on the wall, but the underlying Fisher-McCrary case then got shuffled back to Baltimore City, for another round of ongoing litigation. But with her bounce-back spirit and dignity in tact, Fisher filed a $70-million dollar lawsuit against Bank of America in Florida, to recoup her loses and financial collapse entwined with the McCrary litigation cannibalization.

“I enjoyed reading this month’s Vanity Fair Sophia Loren article,” Fisher quips. “She recounts the horror and sorrow of having her beloved Italian villa and belongings seized. I can relate.”

In the long-running twisted Fisher-McCrary saga, when McCrary previously launched his own separate 2008 lawsuit against banking behemoth BofA, he sought to recover the same monies he doubly seeks from Fisher. Likewise Fisher’s lawsuit against BofA wants the financial institution to equally be held accountable for McCrary’s claims against her. Confused yet? To add to the mix, now comes Fisher’s sequenced-segment video tell-all roll out, an intimate portraiture that documents and spotlights a far different story than McCrary and his attorneys previously told courts and the media about Fisher, Fisher says.

Why the flashback video release? Why now? “I’m tired of fabricated tales passing for truth,” Fisher explains. Although Fisher does not specifically address each point-by-point detail as to just exactly what the video release refutes, she smiles, “The people who want to know, those who need to know, and who are familiar with the case, will know. It’s obvious. The video speaks for itself. It unwraps layers of fact over fiction. The video unfolds the truth. It shows me as I am, and it captures the night I met McCrary and his wife Mary Haley for the first time. I was never his business associate, ever.”

From a colorful wedding vow renewal ceremony to prayers, singing and blessings at the French Quarter’s Beauregard House, from lookalike Elvis, Cher and Tina tribute artist entertainment to dancing on stage, a ’59 pink Cadillac convertible named Lulabell shrouded in fog, “happy birthday” cake and teary tributes — with McCrary in attendance — Fisher’s alternately poignant and entertaining a-day-in-the-life of TJ Fisher “The TJ Fisher Party” video clips debut on her SwampEmpress Youtube Channel. Fisher’s three dogs, two parakeets and one cat help her out with video-dispatch intros, lead-ins that then rewind the past, as Fisher waxes poetic with potent commentary sound-bites.

Fisher’s negligence case claim against BofA is proceeding in the 15th Judicial Circuit of Florida, where Judge Catherine M. Brunson replaced Judge Thomas H. Barkdull, III on the case in a judicial rotation; meanwhile, McCrary’s case against Fisher proceeds in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, where Fisher’s attorneys have asked presiding Judge W. Michel Pierson to shed light on a secret settlement agreement McCrary or one of his LLCs entered into with BofA.

A decade ago famed Louisiana sharecropper’s grandson famed litigator Johnnie Cochran was Fisher’s legal counsel; she laments that fact that superstar Cochran wasn’t alive to take on McCrary’s attorney, former Circuit Court for Baltimore City Judge William “Billy” Murphy, Esq., often dubbed “Johnnie Cochran East” in his stylish manner of dress, courthouse theatrics and self-proclaimed “800-pound gorilla” legal strategies. “The Fisher-McCrary would have a far different courtroom-victory ending,” Fisher says.

During the Fisher-McCrary litigation, the Baltimore press has profiled McCrary’s smorgasbord of prescription narcotic pharmaceuticals usage and spousal allegations of domestic abuse, firearm brandishing and supposed failed stints at rehab. Like Fisher, McCrary has been snared in his own foreclosure tales of woe. He has also been subject to wage garnishment.

With respect to Fisher’s BofA litigation, which encompasses a claim against BofA for any McCrary default judgment against Fisher, noted international legal counsel for the entertainment industry, Russell Smith, Esq. and Frank Dehn, Esq. (New York, London, Los Angeles, India) of SmithDehn LLP and their legal assistance firm SDD Global Solutions, will assist Schulz in case preparation, as will Fisher’s longtime attorneys in the Fisher-McCrary litigation, Richard Winelander of Baltimore and Al M. Thompson, Jr., Esq. of New Orleans.
 
Fisher is a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), Directors Guild of America (DGA), Producers Guild of America (PGA), Dramatists Guild of America (DG), Authors Guild (AG), National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS), Screen Actors Guild (SAG), Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), and other professional guilds and organizations.

For more information on TJ Fisher, please visit:
http://www.tjfisher.com
http://www.tjfisher.net
 
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