A Family Tries to Get Its Good Name Back

The Boyce family has been practicing law in Wake County for decades now. Gene Boyce has worked in his profession for nearly half a century, and even served as counsel to Sen. Sam J. Ervin during the Watergate hearings in the early 1970s. His son, Dan Boyce, has been practicing law more than 20 years. Gene’s daughter and Dan’s sister, Laura Boyce Isley, was admitted to the state bar back in 1992, as was her husband, Philip R. Isley.

But their good names and reputation have been under a cloud since the 2000 election, when Dan ran for North Carolina attorney general against Roy Cooper. Cooper ran an ad near the end of the campaign smearing Dan and his family for their successful Smith A Protestor lawsuit in 1995 against the state that resulted in them “charging $28,000 an hour in lawyer fees to the taxpayers,” according to Cooper’s commercial. The 30-second ad was flat out wrong because it left out many details in its allegations, such as the fact that Dan did not work on the lawsuit himself – it was his father Gene who was among the lead lawyers in the case. And the “$28,000 an hour in lawyer fees” was incorrect too – the final decision awarded the winning lawyers $1.5 million, which comes out nowhere near the first figure in the amount of time the team spent on researching and pursuing the case in court.

In fact, the $1.5 million awarded to Gene Boyce and Womble Carlyle was for a different part of the case. The state refused to pay interest on the judgment awarding principal tax refunds, so Gene prosecuted a separate claim for interest, and that resulted in the $1.5 million. Cooper’s ad about Smith A Protestors refund case has absolutely nothing to do with the recovery of that separate item. There was no fee of any kind awarded in the Smith A Protestors case.

Moreover, Dan’s law firm of Boyce & Isley, which consisted of him, Gene, Laura and Philip, was not even in existence in 1995, which was the time of the Smith A Protestor lawsuit mentioned in the ad. Therefore, Cooper implicated them as being greedy and unethical when that simply wasn’t true. He included third parties and portrayed them unfairly. This prompted Philip to send letters to Cooper’s campaign asking that they stop running the untrue ads or face a lawsuit. Cooper did not comply, so since Nov. 6, 2000, when they filed the lawsuit, the four attorneys with Boyce & Isley have been diligently attempting to have the matter resolved in court so that they could get back their good name.

In the nearly eight years that have followed, Cooper has been elected and re-elected attorney general without having to address the issue in court. He has made efforts to dismiss it that have been rejected even by judges who are as staunch a Democrat as he is. One said in her decision that “The context of a political campaign does not alter the fact that, ‘false statements made with reckless disregard of the truth, do not enjoy constitutional protection.’”
At the same time, Dan, Gene, Laura and Philip must contend with the fact that the state’s highest ranking attorney has defamed them and sees no reason to apologize, much less have the issue reviewed in court. We are talking about individuals with nearly a century practicing law in North Carolina – including one involved in prosecuting one of the biggest scandals in our nation’s history – and this is how they get treated?

This situation clearly is not fair to them and has proceeded far too long. The attorney general needs either to settle the matter or face the charges in court without further delay, if he really believes he can prove he did not defame the family. Their purpose has never been get money and would have settled years ago for only a public apology and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. That is the right approach, because they know that you cannot put any price on having your family’s name and reputation restored.