Tripped for Sure

Angry senior citizens bedeviling former Congressman Bob Clement, now running for mayor, are moving their class-action lawsuit across the country to Nashville just in time for the mayoral election.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs bought what they thought was vacation insurance from Johnson’s company, Trip Assured. But then when their vacations were canceled for medical or other emergencies, Trip Assured wouldn’t pay up.

It’s a story that seems tailor-made for negative TV political ads, and the name Trip Assured is likely to become familiar to Nashville voters as the mayor’s race unfolds this summer.

Despite dozens of complaints, it took the state Department of Commerce and Insurance three years to order Trip Assured to stop selling insurance without a license in Tennessee. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs say the hang-up was Clement and his wife, Mary. She runs the department’s Division of Consumer Affairs, which received the complaints. Before Tennessee acted in 2006, three states had already issued orders that the company stop selling in their states. Since then, Florida and California have followed.

Clement has said he’s been friends with Johnson for 30 years. Johnson and his wife have given Clement $1,000 for his mayoral campaign, and Johnson gave $1,500 to Clement’s losing 2002 U.S. Senate bid.

“I think Clement should reimburse every dime he’s received from Johnson and establish a fund for the thousands of seniors across the country who were burned by this scam artist,” says Barry Resnick, the son of one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs.

Claude Fender, now a retired Commerce and Insurance investigator, said at one point that Bob Clement told him during a 2004 phone call to lay off Trip Assured. After Clement denied having that conversation (“That’s just not true,” he told The Tennessean), Fender again insisted to a reporter that it was Clement who phoned him.

Now Fender, living in Arkansas, says he was mistaken.

“Basically what everybody’s wanting to know is whether Mr. Clement was directly involved in trying to squelch an investigation I was conducting into Trip Assured,” Fender tells the Scene. “During my investigation, I did receive a call from someone asking what I thought I was doing investigating this because I had no jurisdiction in it. I told that person that was not for them to decide. At that time, Mr. Clement’s name was prominent, and I guess I made an assumption that Mr. Clement was the person I talked to.”

“Upon reflection,” Fender says he believes it actually was Trip Assured’s Nashville lawyer at the time, David Broemel, who phoned him. Broemel was trying to persuade state regulators that Trip Assured wasn’t actually selling insurance and, therefore, did not fall under insurance regulations. Officials for the company, which is going out of business now, contend that many of its critics actually were running a scam themselves, canceling their vacations before signing up with the company.

Broemel, contacted by the Scene, says he may have talked with Fender but did not use a threatening tone. “I certainly talked with and had meetings with people in the Insurance Department. But of course I wouldn’t call this guy and—what did he say I told him?—to lay off or something. I wouldn’t say that. That sounds like kind of a mafia thing.”

Both Clements have denied any impropriety. As state consumer affairs director, Mary Clement says she excused herself from any dealings with the complaints about Trip Assured.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say they agreed to transfer their case to Nashville to gain jurisdiction to sue not just Trip Assured but also Johnson personally. They say there could be as many as 200 victims who are owed up to $5 million from Trip Assured.

John Tiedt, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, says he expects the lawsuit to start kicking into gear in July, and he’s considering taking depositions from both Clements. So just before the Aug. 2 election, Clement could be forced to testify under oath about whether, to help a political crony, he tried to quash an investigation into an alleged rip-off of old folks.

Clement campaign spokesman Ben Hall says the campaign won’t return Johnson’s contributions, and he plays down the controversy’s potential impact in the mayor’s race.

“The story’s been in the media, and it’s been thoroughly examined in the past,” Hall says.