2 lawsuits filed against attorney charged with human trafficking

Published 5:36 pm Thursday, March 15, 2018

Alleged actions relating to a criminal case involving a Cullman attorney have resulted in the filing of a pair of civil lawsuits this week in Cullman Circuit Court.

Randy Allan Hames, as well as two local businesses that bear his name, are named in the suits, which seek relief for a bevy of harms the plaintiffs — all local women — allege Hames committed, or threatened to commit, if they refused his sexual advances.

In one suit, plaintiff Doris M. Watson, a former tenant at the trailer park Hames owns in southern Cullman County, alleges that Hames extorted her by “inducing her to perform sexual favors in exchange for not being evicted.”

According to the complaint, Watson, a mother of three who lived at the property from September 2012 through May 2013, sustained mental suffering after Hames allegedly “used coercion and deception to make Plaintiff believe she would be evicted if she did not perform sexual favors for him.”

In the other suit, plaintiff Alisha Cobb accuses Hames of using his court-appointed power as guardian at litem for Cobb’s four children as leverage to elicit sexual favors from the plaintiff.

Hames began serving as guardian ad litem on behalf of Cobb’s children in late 2010, and the complaint alleges that Hames eventually persuaded Cobb to move into one of his trailers “rent-free” in order to help her “get her kids back.”

“Throughout his tenure as Guardian Ad Litem for Plaintiff’s children, Hames’ statements and questions to Plaintiff were rarely about her children but were almost always about her and of a romantic or sexual nature,” the suit alleges, accusing Hames of repeatedly requesting sexual favors from Cobb in exchange for favorable legal representation.

Hames “violated his obligations as a licensed attorney and as the Court appointed GAL [guardian ad litem],” the suit alleges. “Defendant Hames’ actions were willful, malicious and beyond all bounds of decencies and were only intended to gratify his sexual desires.”

The lawsuits come on the heels of new criminal charges against Hames, 75, who faces a single count of first-degree human trafficking, and a single count of second-degree human trafficking. Both felony charges stem from an investigation by the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office that led to Hames’ March 5 arrest on a pair of second-degree human trafficking charges, as well as misdemeanor charges of soliciting prostitution and 2nd degree stalking in an earlier arrest on Feb. 22.

Local judges have recused themselves from Hames’ criminal cases, citing the potential for a conflict of interest arising from their past shared membership in the local bar association. Circuit Judge Donna S. Pate of Madison County will weigh whether, and how, to consolidate Hames’ criminal cases at a status conference Friday at 3 p.m. at the Cullman County Courthouse.