There’s not a lot to comment on in this story. Simply count up the legal malpractice issues: conflict of interest, attorneys switching sides, surreptitious spying, computer hacking on attorney-client e-mails…
"By the time it was finally hauled into court last year, it had all the ingredients of a cheap detective novel: the millionaire husband of a seductive singer and the P.I. he’s paying to tail her; hidden (and possibly tax payer-funded) cameras; hacked computers; two-bit lawyers who’ll even turn on their own clients if the retainer is juicy enough; and at the heart of it all, lots of money up for grabs. The case is still in litigation, the attorneys and litigants tight-lipped, and what can’t be deduced from the public record at the courthouse is left to swirl in the air of bridge club gossip.
Presumably, Stella Black–recognizable to many as the busty brunette in the Whit-Ash Furniture commercials– had no idea that her husband had been conspiring to leave her for months. Nor, she claims, could she have known that he had fully infiltrated her music career and that her confidante and talent agent as well as her entertainment lawyer were both working clandestinely on his payroll to spy on her, according to one affidavit.
Stella Black’s affidavit repeatedly refers to a private investigator named Edwards and her pending legal malpractice suit in common pleas court against Whit-Ash names one Jim Edwards as a defendant. According to court documents, Edwards installed hidden cameras “that were secretly mounted at and around Plaintiff’s residence” in Forest Acres.
Phillips allegedly began forwarding Stella’s private emails and secret transcripts of her meetings with attorneys to Black and his crew. Later, she claims, they set up a wide area network (WAN) that connected Whit-Ash computers to her home computer so they could have unfettered access to her hard drive and email.
Phillips also allegedly installed Spector Pro software on her laptop to capture every keystroke and create screen shots of Stella’s emails to her attorneys. And when the preliminary divorce proceedings were underway, Stella looked up to see none other than her entertainment lawyer, Rebecca West, representing Whit. She believes it had been planned all along ."