Kansas retiree will take even a traffic ticket all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court
A tiny hamlet an hour south of Kansas City, Williamsburg calls itself “the home of just plain folks.” All 388 of them, presumably. And then there’s Eric S. Clark.
For nearly two decades, the 60-year-old retiree has lived alone on a small acreage at the edge of town, where hidden behind shrouded windows and doors he immerses himself in right-wing conspiracy theories and posts videos displaying semi-automatic weapon fire on his YouTube channel.
But the pastime for which he has become notorious in his adopted hometown and beyond is Clark’s glee in suing governments large and small for what he considers real — and the courts largely say are imagined — infringements on his constitutional rights.
Clark describes himself as a self taught “lawyer,” not a licensed attorney, who does his own legal work. And he is prolific at it, court records show. Over the past decade, he’s become known for inundating opponents with voluminous pleadings, motions and petitions for judicial review. His cases tend to drag on for years, whether he’s appealing a misdemeanor or pressing a civil lawsuit.
If and when he loses in the lower courts, as he ultimately has (he was once awarded $1 in damages, but the state appeals court wanted the buck back), it’s a virtual certainty that Clark will appeal to the next highest court, where he loses once again.
All the while his opponents’ legal bills continue to grow, along with Clark’s reputation for pursuing what his opponents consider frivolous cases.
“He’s a litigious guy,” said Shawnee City Attorney Ellis Rainey. “City attorneys are like a bunch of old men sitting around on a porch, we talk all the time ... and I remember calling one of my neighboring cities once and asking, ‘Do you know this guy?’ And they said, ‘Hell yes we do.’ ”
Clark has sued the current governor of Kansas, the former attorney general of the United States, his local school superintendent, as well as several cities and counties in the Kansas City area.
He once challenged a $10 traffic ticket all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to have the justices refuse to hear the case, which began more than three years earlier when an Olathe cop spotted the driver of a 1994 Ford Escort not wearing a seatbelt and pulled the car over.
Clark was behind the wheel.
In 2018, he again petitioned the high court, urging the justices to reverse the dismissal of a lawsuit he’d filed challenging the city of Shawnee’s gun ordinance, a case he lost, in part, because he personally had never been cited for violating the law.
Petition denied, the court said.
But he was undaunted, viewing every legal setback as valuable experience to consider when pursing the next lawsuit.
“With each one I learn a little more,” Clark said in an exchange of several emails with The Star. Clark said he was too busy pressing forward with pending legal matters to take time out for a phone or face-to-face interview.
Jackson County lawsuit
Now Clark is targeting Jackson County, Missouri, challenging the mask order and other restrictions the health department imposed last year. Clark contends that the requirements for mask use and social distancing infringe on his right to free speech and other constitutional guarantees.
Clark fears he might be prosecuted, he claims in a now pending federal lawsuit, if he were to “engage in being closer than six feet apart from others in Jackson County without a mask in public spaces including holding hands for long (hours) and continuous periods of time with someone who does not yet live with him.”
And what if he wants to make a maskless phone call at a bus stop on Truman Road and there’s no one around, he asked in a court document? He might refrain because of the order’s “chilling effect.”
A similar theme runs through many of the dozen state and federal cases Clark has pursued since becoming a serial litigator nine years ago. His emphasis on hypothetical wrongs has fallen flat with judges. The key to winning in court is more often proving you’ve actually been wronged in some way, not that you might be.
For that reason, Jackson County’s legal team says his mask order suit ought to be dismissed, because the damages he claims to have suffered are “purely theoretical.”
But the well-paid private attorneys at the Polsinelli law firm who are representing the health department best not think they will make quick work of Eric Stefan Clark.
No, if the past is any guide, Clark’s case against Jackson County Health Director Bridgette Shaffer and Sheriff Darryl Forté will drag on long after we’ve stored our masks away and COVID-19 recedes in the rear-view mirror.
“The guy has a lot of knowledge in law, a lot of knowledge to keep things tied up in the court system for anybody who crosses his path,” said Jon Horne, the longtime former mayor of Williamsburg.
Horne would know. More than six years ago, Williamsburg’s part-time code officer wrote Clark to tell him he would have to remove “three large barrels, several signs and other affixed objects” that were located within a disputed 80-foot easement on the edge of his property.
When Clark threatened to sue, the city backed off, but he filed a lawsuit anyway, which he lost at the district court level and then on appeal.
Had the plaintiff been someone else, the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in January might have brought some relief to the long beleaguered folks at city hall in Williamsburg.
But recently Clark was racing to file his third separate appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before a deadline this week.
“I can’t talk about it,” Williamsburg City Clerk Nola Burgess said. “We’re still in court.”
Conspiracy theories on display
Beyond a row of eastern red cedar trees so thick their pungent scent lingers to the center line of Dane Avenue, Clark’s century-old farmhouse is the first dwelling on the right of the main street into town as you exit Interstate 35 and cross over the Williamsburg city limits.
You can’t miss it. The front porch is curtained from the roof line to the floorboards with some kind of fabric to obscure the door and windows, while plastic tarps wall off a side entrance so you can’t see inside. The name and address on the mailbox at the end of the gravel drive have been covered with duct tape.
A wooden cross maybe 25 feet tall juts skyward from a yard cluttered with a half dozen old cars and trucks and a couple of small trailers. The sign on one of the trailers calls for scuttling the central banking system — “End the Fed,” it says — and includes the web address for infowars.com conspiracy theory hustler Alex Jones, of whom Clark is a fan. The sign on the other declares that the 911 attacks were “an inside job,” another infowars conspiracy theory.
Born in Independence, Missouri, in 1960, Clark lived the first two-thirds of his life in the Kansas City area, before moving to Williamsburg in 2003. Records show he made the move after a jury found him guilty of felony involuntary manslaughter in connection with a traffic accident.
Clark had been behind the wheel of his 1975 Cadillac one Sunday after church in 2001 when he blacked out on prescription painkillers, according to news reports at the time, and hit another car head on, killing the driver.
Even the prosecutors argued in favor of leniency, The Star reported.
“He’s a good man,” a friend said at the sentencing hearing, at which even the victim’s family asked that he not serve prison time.
Clark was sentenced to 10 days in jail and three years probation. The month after his release, he bought the place he lives in now on the outskirts of Williamsburg because, he said, it had enough land to suit his interests.
“My main concern at the time was space and out-buildings as I was a ‘backyard mechanic’ and I fixed up junkers to make them dependable and then sell cheap to those in need of transportation (more needy than me Haha),” Clark said in an email.
Round trip, it was a two-hour commute to and from his job at the Internal Revenue Service in Kansas City, but he also did a fair amount of telecommuting before taking early retirement.
Other than a few traffic tickets, his name did not appear much in the public record during that first decade living in Williamsburg.
But that changed in 2012, when he attended a protest outside the annual Bilderberg Meeting, which was held in Virginia that year and where Alex Jones urged his many followers to gather.
Since 1954, about 130 politicians, business executives, academics and others from Europe and North America have gathered each year for an informal discussion of a variety of issues. The private meetings have long sparked suspicion among people like Jones, who believe the Bilderbergers are conspiring to create a one-world government.
Court records show Clark was cited for five minor offenses over three days of protesting at the 2012 meeting, ranging from disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice without force to improper parking and the one misdemeanor he was ultimately found guilty of: “stop vehicle to impede travel (attempted.)“
A YouTube Video shows Clark, wearing an infowars.com T-shirt and a ball cap with the words “Speak Truth” on it, being arrested after climbing over a police barrier.
Clark cites that episode as the inspiration for his court activism today.
“My quest for legal knowledge began about a decade ago when I was falsely arrested multiple times while at a protest,” Clark said in one of several emails he exchanged with a reporter before cutting off communication.
“Thankfully, even though I represented myself in front of the the jury for one of the criminal misdemeanor charges, the jury found in my favor. I have since filed numerous cases to address the government overreach that has become rampant.”
In 2016, Clark sued former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch after the government mistakenly denied him permission to buy a gun, citing his failure of an FBI background check. But the government admitted its error when he pointed out that his gun rights had been restored 10 years after his manslaughter conviction, yet he still pressed on in court until the judge declared the matter moot.
Last year he sued Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly over the state’s mask order, which he lost at the district court level. An appeal is in the works, Clark said.
Burdensome lawsuits
Why does Clark file so many lawsuits that he ultimately ends up losing? It’s not for money by any means. Think of it as one man’s lonely campaign to fight what he sees as government overreach.
His 87-year-old father, Merrill D. Clark of Overland Park, said he doesn’t see his son often but is proud of his work.
“He’s a single man, just kind of a loner,” the elder Clark said. “He works all the time on these legal cases. He’s done very good.”
It’s hard telling how much his lawsuits have cost the taxpayers of the municipalities and other governmental bodies to hire lawyers. Insurance companies often pick up the tab for private law firms that specialize in such cases after the taxing districts meet their deductibles.
Horne, who stepped down last year after two decades as Williamsburg’s mayor, said the hours he committed to helping defend the city was a burden on him. And the city spent $15,000 on legal bills to fulfill its deduction before the insurance kicked in — a lot of money when your entire city budget is $250,000, he said.
In addition, the city eliminated the code inspector’s position rather than risk another lawsuit, which Horne considers a shame.
“We established the municipal court system, we established the code enforcement position with the intention to try to get our small town cleaned up and make it a viable town,” he said. “But we are now faced with the issue of not being able to do that because we continue to have issues with Mr. Clark.”
Another area official who’s been named in more than one of Clark’s lawsuits declined to comment for the record, fearing it might spark more litigation.
“I really don’t need to give him any fertilizer,” the man said. “I don’t need any trouble.”
Two attorneys who fought Clark in long court battles were also wary of commenting when contacted by a reporter.
“He strikes me as being real anti-government,” one said.
Courts can sanction plaintiffs or refuse to consider lawsuits that are clearly without merit and a waste of everyone’s time. But in the United States of America, everyone has a right to seek redress through the court system, if somewhere in all the written pleadings there’s some kernel of a legitimate legal point at issue.
“There’s nothing to stop people from filing stuff like this,” Rainey said.
At least two other suits are now pending in federal court challenging elements of Jackson County’s health order. One was widely reported upon when the plaintiff, Abundant Life Baptist Church, filed it last spring. The church accused the county of violating its rights under the constitution when limiting the number of people who could attend church during that first phase of the shutdown.
Jackson County is also named as a defendant along with Gov. Mike Parson and Independence Mayor Eileen Weir in a lawsuit filed in October by a man who, like Clark, is also representing himself. But unlike Clark, records show that other plaintiff has filed only one other lawsuit in federal or Missouri state courts, and that was back in 2005.
An attorney representing the county health department in all three cases did not respond to a request for comment.
Clark’s main contention, he said in an email, is that the right to impose the restriction should under law rest with the county’s elected legislature, not the executive branch, and cited a state statute to support his theory.
“The portion delegating power to the County Legislature is okay, but to the Board of Health directly is not okay.”
The county begs to differ and at some point a judge or jury will sort it out.
Meantime, Clark offered this bit of context, punctuated with the old-school smiley face that pre-dates the modern emoji.
“I don’t mind wearing a FACE MASK so long as I am not forced by the government to do so.:-0)“
