Doc Netterville, a lawyer with a Jackson County contract, may have signed a few too many documents

On November 15, 2013, Kansas City lawyer Mike Gunter took a call from a stranger.

Gunter, however, was well-known to the person on the other end of the line: Kimberly Teen, a Grandview woman who wondered why Gunter wasn’t doing more to handle her traffic case in Osage County, Kansas.

Teen had been pulled over November 27, 2010, for driving 77 miles an hour through a 65-mph zone. The officer who stopped her discovered that she was driving on a suspended license, the type of infraction that one can’t flick away by dropping a check in the mail to the county court.

Teen needed a lawyer to resolve the case. It’s not clear just how she found Doc Netterville, but she hired him and paid him $600. He accepted the fee and told her that Gunter would handle her case in Osage County, Gunter says.

According to Gunter, Netterville often referred Kansas clients to him because Netterville — though politically connected in Jackson County, with a history of representing public bodies in Missouri — isn’t licensed to practice law in Kansas.

Gunter tells The Pitch that he doesn’t recall a case involving Kimberly Teen. “I worried,” Gunter says of Teen’s call to him. “Did I let something fall through the cracks?”

A couple of days after Teen contacted him, Gunter called the Kansas 4th Judicial District, which includes Osage County, to figure out what was going on. He found that a document bearing his name had been filed with the court November 17, 2012, signaling Gunter’s legal representation of Teen in court. But the signature that appeared with Gunter’s name looked markedly different from the one on every publicly available document that the Kansas City lawyer had filed in other cases.

Gunter suspected that Netterville had forged the signature.

A few weeks later, Gunter received an e-mail from the Johnson County District Court, in Olathe, summoning him to the courthouse for a February 12, 2014, hearing. This one was also for a traffic case, one involving Netterville.

About a year before, on February 20, 2013, Netterville was pulled over by a Kansas Highway Patrol officer for driving his 2000 Mercedes S500 69 mph on northbound Interstate 35, near Johnson Drive, where the speed limit at the time was posted as 60. Netterville was driving without a license, without proof of insurance and without a current license plate.

A fax indicating that Gunter would represent Netterville in the case that resulted from this stop showed up April 4, 2013, at the Olathe courthouse. The signature on the fax looked a lot like the one on the Teen document.

In both the Johnson County and Osage County cases, Gunter told the court that his signature had been forged, and he withdrew as the attorney for Netterville and Teen.

In the Osage County case, magistrate Judge Taylor Wine was troubled enough by the apparent forgery that he filed a complaint against Netterville with the Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, the body that investigates and disciplines instances of lawyer misconduct. In the traffic-case file for Teen, a letter from a Missouri investigator confirms that the office received Wine’s complaint against Netterville and adds that an investigation is under way.

Gunter dispatched his own ethics complaint about Netterville to the disciplinary counsel. He thinks that Netterville was behind the bogus documents.

“Who else could it be?” he says.

Netterville referred questions about Gunter’s claims to lawyer Bob Russell, who acknowledged that Netterville had matters pending before the Missouri Bar but couldn’t speak about them.

Netterville wasn’t among the folks dealing with traffic tickets in the Olathe courtroom February 12. But someone was there asking about Netterville.

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That man, Terry Houghton, has pursued Netterville with zeal over the past two years.

The two men were acquaintances, and Netterville once leased office space from Houghton. They fell out over a bizarre real-estate deal involving a downtown Kansas City, Missouri, office and apartment building near the Charles Evans Whittaker U.S. Courthouse.

Houghton’s version of events puts Netterville, his former attorney, at the center of a scheme to take over an 11,000-square-foot building at 604 Page Street from him. Houghton’s story is backed up in large part by an affidavit from the notary, who says she didn’t sign and memorialize a key document that put the building in Netterville’s control.

Netterville’s version of events is harder to track down. He did not respond to several messages left with his law office. Once reached by cellphone, Netterville referred questions to his Leawood attorney, David Mandelbaum.

Netterville, as a licensed lawyer in Missouri, is an officer of the court. And as a lawyer with a history of contracting with political subdivisions (he’s now the attorney for the Jackson County Board of Equalization), Netterville is also accountable to the public.

It has been that way for a while. Since being admitted to the Missouri Bar in 1991, Netterville has worked for several public institutions in Kansas City. Later that decade, he bounced back and forth between running the Kansas City Public Schools’ human resources and legal departments. He was also, until two years ago, a lawyer for Allen Village School, a charter school in midtown.

In 2007, newly elected Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders appointed Netterville to serve on the Jackson County Board of Equalization, a three-member body that hears appeals from residents arguing that the county has missed the mark on their property-tax assessments.

Netterville’s term expired New Year’s Eve 2009. Two months later, he moved to a paying position with the county, this time providing outside legal services to the Board of Equalization. That contract pays $25,000 a year, and the county has renewed it for each of the past five years.

The Board of Equalization has been especially busy since 2013, when the county’s then-flawed assessment methodology led to substantially increased tax bills for many property owners.

Netterville has also been described as a behind-the-scenes functionary in Jackson County and Kansas City politics. Notably, he peeked from behind the curtain in 1998 as the treasurer for Kelvin Simmons’ run for Kansas City, Missouri’s City Council. Netterville, by most accounts, ran a decent law practice then, working out of the small, ground-floor office that he leased from Houghton.

Houghton bought that Page Street building in 2003 from Phyllis and Clifford McElhinney, a couple from Lathrop, Missouri. He paid roughly $500,000.

The McElhinneys were insurance clients of Houghton’s. It was an owner-financed purchase, meaning that the McElhinneys held a lien on the building; Houghton, who was elected to the Clinton County, Missouri, Board of County Commissioners in the early 1990s, completed the purchase with a business entity that he created called SSHSBC.

Houghton saw the building as an investment opportunity, and he scooped up the old, out-of-code structure for a relatively low price at a time when reviving downtown Kansas City was a lot of talk and not much action.

“There was nothing in this area,” Houghton tells The Pitch. “The view looked like Beirut.”

To the north, the building looks out over the Interstate 70 loop toward the River Market. To the south, the federal courthouse looms.

Netterville had leased office space from Houghton at 400 Admiral Boulevard, until Houghton sold that building in 2007. Netterville then moved to 604 Page Street and leased space there while Houghton began renovating the property into a dual office-apartment building.

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By 2011, though, Houghton had succumbed to financial difficulties, falling behind on the Page Street mortgage and property taxes. Houghton says he went to Netterville for legal advice on securing forbearance.

“He offered to use his legal services to help me work out an arrangement with the McElhinneys on the taxes,” Houghton says. “He owed me rent. We just kind of shook hands. It was in his best interest that I obtain and modify the loan. If I couldn’t resolve my issues with the McElhinneys, that had a direct effect on him.”

Houghton says he was under the impression that Netterville would handle the mortgage-revision negotiations, and he admits that he was inattentive after that handshake.

“My mistake was, I handed it off and I didn’t stay diligent on it, even though I knew that obligation was out there and that it had to be taken care of,” he says.

In 2013, Gunter told Houghton that he had become half-owner of the building in a deal struck with Netterville. This was news to Houghton, who believed that he still owned the building under SSHSBC. Then Houghton saw a document that purported to transfer his ownership interest in SSHSBC to Netterville. Houghton denies signing that document.

Houghton also found a deed of trust, filed with Jackson County on January 11, 2011, that effectively made the lawyer a lienholder on the 604 Page building. It meant that if the building ever sold, Netterville could get paid in the transaction. The deed of trust, along with a quit-claim deed on the property filed the same day, was notarized by Shelley Jackson.

But Jackson, in a sworn affidavit, says she did not notarize or sign the documents that bear her notary.

Mandelbaum, Netterville’s attorney, offers a more innocent explanation for the fate of the building: Houghton was a business partner who couldn’t pull his weight.

“Netterville and his partner [Gunter] had guaranteed and brought the mortgage current after the prior default and made some guarantees on a forbearance and did some complex and, I think, kooky things some years ago,” Mandelbaum tells The Pitch. “It looked like Houghton had to resign his interest in the company that owned the building. He contests whether or not he did that.”

Mandelbaum was not aware of Jackson’s sworn statements attesting to the forgery until told about them by The Pitch.

“I know that’s what he’s saying, but I don’t believe it,” Mandelbaum says.

Houghton filed to evict Netterville in 2013, which led to Netterville’s filing a quiet-title lawsuit in the 16th Circuit Court of Jackson County, preventing the eviction. Netterville’s lawsuit didn’t go far before he filed for bankruptcy, which halted the case.

With no rent making its way to the lienholders, the 604 Page building went up for a trustee’s sale on the steps of the Jackson County courthouse December 8. The McElhinneys bought it back for $140,000.

Since then, Netterville has moved out. Houghton still lives in a top-floor apartment in the building; the McElhinneys are letting him manage the property. (Reached in Florida, Clifford McElhinney declined to comment for this story.)

Houghton hopes that he can someday buy back the building.

“In some ways, it might have been easier to walk away, but I’m 60 years old,” he says. “Over the last 10 years, everything that I had has been slowly liquidated and funneled into this building. This was my retirement, the nuts and bolts of my extended income.”

Netterville, meanwhile, has two more months left on his contract with the county. Lisa Carter, a spokeswoman for Jackson County, says his 2015 contract hasn’t yet been executed.