Texas Anti-Abortion Pastor Can’t Recover Most of His Legal Fees

A big chunk of attorney fees racked up by an anti-abortion pastor, who defeated claims he made defamatory statements, was tossed by a judge in the latest Texas courtroom clash between rival lawyers over the state’s near total abortion ban.

Following an unusually contentious hearing in Austin—where lawyers accused their opponents of lying in court and of bringing harassing filings—state Judge Laurie Eiserloh of Texas’s 455th Civil District Court issued a split decision Wednesday.

Eiserloh said Mark Lee Dickson, the pastor, is entitled to recover fees for legal services his lawyer performed during a six-week period in 2023. But Dickson won’t get anything from the first three years in the case, since he and his lawyer didn’t have a contract memorializing a pay agreement during that time.

“Dickson had no liability” before finally signing an engagement letter in May 2023, Eiserloh said from the bench.

The exact dollar amount owed to Dickson for those six weeks is uncertain but will be revealed in a forthcoming order, Eiserloh said. It will be substantially less than the $200,000 Dickson requested, which largely covered legal services performed before the recovery period.

Eiserloh also rejected Dickson’s request for $600,000 in sanctions against Lilith Fund.

Lilith Fund, a nonprofit that funds Texans seeking out of state abortions, might have to pay fees that Dickson incurred in fighting the fee dispute, Eiserloh said. That award would also come in her order.

‘Stop Being Ugly to Each Other’

The case is one of at least eight in Texas pitting lawyers on opposite ends of the abortion debate.

Dickson’s lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell, the former state solicitor general, wrote the 2021 Texas law authorizing citizens to sue abortion providers for performing most abortions. Thompson Coburn LLP, a Dallas firm representing Lilith Fund, is challenging elements of the ban in a number of cases.

Although all of their cases are tied in someway to abortion, this one is unusual in that involves a fight over attorney fees lasting more than a year.

The Texas Citizens Participation Act requires a party that brings a defamation claim and loses to pay reasonable fees to the party they sued.

Dickson, pastor at SovereignLOVE Church in east Texas, prevailed in the underlying case when the state’s highest appeals court said a comment he made calling Lilith Fund a “literal criminal organization,” is an opinion protected by the First Amendment.

But lawyers continued to spar over whether Dickson is entitled to recover attorney fees, since it was his church, not him individually, that paid Mitchell. More, Lilith Fund’s lawyer, Elizabeth Myers, argued Dickson never agreed to pay Mitchell at an hourly rate of $500 until after they prevailed in the underlying case and moved to recover fees.

During separate testimonies, Dickson and Mitchell said they agreed to the fee during a phone call in 2020, but didn’t memorialize it in a written document until three years later. It was during the period between those dates that Eiserloh said Lilith Fund won’t have to pay fees.

During a contentious cross examination on Tuesday, Myers pressed Dickson on the source of money used to pay Mitchell. Dickson said he raised it from church members and community members. He didn’t identify any donors except for his grandma, saying the money came from over 100 people.

The hearing was often contentious, with Mitchell blaming Myers for causing Dickson to miss his grandma’s funeral because she kept him on the stand for too long on Tuesday. Mitchell then apologized Wednesday during his testimony —"I shouldn’t have said that.”

Eiserloh lost her patience over the lawyers’ conduct. With Mitchell on the stand and answering questions from Myers, she grabbed her gavel and slammed it to interrupt a snippy interaction between the lawyers.

“Stop being ugly to each other,” Eiserloh said, voice raised. She called both sides “true believers” who needed to “cool out.”

The lawyers are locked into a similar fee dispute in Dallas stemming from two other defamation cases lost by Lilith Fund. A hearing was set for Friday to determine fees. Both sides agreed to cancel it so that they can submit evidence produced in the Austin hearing.

The case is The Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity v. Dickson, Tex. Dist. Ct., No. D-1-GN-20-003113, 9/18/24.