Dixie Lawsuit Over Commissions Gets Ugly

A lawsuit filed on Jan. 28, 2005, by former broker Jenny Talley against Ben Israel, owner of Dixie Real Estate, has apparently turned from unpleasant to downright ugly.

What started as a squabble over lost commissions has turned into a multivolume suit and counter suit that takes up two feet of shelf space at the Washington County Circuit Court clerk’s office.

Cutting through all the clutter, this is what we’ve learned:

Talley sued Dixie for lost commissions, defamation of character, punitive damages and attorney’s fees. Some of her charges are that Israel and others falsified documents to keep from paying her commissions and then dragged her reputation through the mud.

With each amended complaint, the asking price has gone up. What started as Talley seeking $350,000 is now about a $755,000 claim.

In the counter suit, Israel and Dixie said that Talley simultaneously acted as a seller’s agent (for a previous client while she worked at another company) and a buyer’s agent (for Dixie) in a land transaction worth $1.14 million. She helped her previous client buy the same land for $420,000 (or $728,936 less) just 17 months earlier, the suit said.

Talley is also accused of submitting “false commission disbursement requests” in violation of her broker’s contract with Dixie and Talley “withholding her cooperation related to the termination of her position as principal broker.” Dixie is seeking more than $1 million in its counter suit.

Lamar Pettus with Pettus Pettus & McGuire represents Talley, and he did not return phone calls. Derrick Davidson, a partner with Gill Elrod Ragon Owen & Sherman, is representing Dixie in the suit and had no comment.

The suit is set to go to trial Aug. 22.