Courthouse security stops man with concealed gun

By Jeff German

Saturday, Feb. 14, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Vigilance paid off for a courthouse marshal manning a metal detector two weeks ago at the Regional Justice Center.

The marshal, Jason Dean, arrested a former Las Vegas cabdriver with a violent past for allegedly carrying a loaded unregistered handgun in his backpack while going through the scanner Jan. 29. The district attorney’s office later filed a one-count felony complaint against the ex-cabbie, Jonas Maxwell, 51, charging him with bringing a concealed firearm into the courthouse.

Maxwell was carrying a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun with “26 rounds of ammunition,” according the arrest report. The gun was behind a laptop computer in Maxwell’s backpack.

The marshals say they usually find a couple of firearms a year on people coming to the courthouse.

Maxwell told Dean he had no business in court that day, but he would not say why he was there.

He also told Dean he had never been arrested, but a check of police records, Dean said in the report, showed “priors for battery and obstructing a police officer.”

Taxicab industry sources said Maxwell worked for seven months at Yellow Checker Star until he was let go in January 2007 after a fight with a doorman at the Palms.

Maxwell also got into an altercation with a police officer on the Strip while working as a cabdriver in May 2006, the industry sources said.

Attorney Allen Cap, who said he bailed Maxwell out of the county jail after his Jan. 29 arrest, described him as a “pretty nice guy.” He said the incident was “an absolute mistake” on Maxwell’s part.

“He told me was there for a traffic matter and didn’t realize the gun was in his backpack,” Cap explained. “He said he was going to do some target shooting later in the day.”

Cap — who filed a lawsuit on Maxwell’s behalf in December stemming from a motorcycle accident that injured Maxwell ­— said his client now works at a local art gallery.

•••

Mark James, a former county commissioner and state senator, hasn’t been practicing law the past two years, but other lawyers were recently trying to force him to come down to the courthouse.

The law firm of Greenberg Traurig filed court papers Feb. 4 seeking to have James held in contempt of court. They alleged James had been ducking a subpoena for records in ongoing legal action over the 2004 sale of the Alexis Park Hotel.

James, a former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, was on the other side of the litigation before he became the chief executive officer of Frias Holding Co., which runs five taxicab companies.

Greenberg Traurig argued in its motion it had tried numerous times to serve James with the subpoena. A process server finally left the subpoena with a security guard at the entrance to James’ residential development, the firm said.

A District Court discovery commissioner had scheduled a hearing last Wednesday on whether to have James held in contempt.

But before the hearing took place, attorney Will Kemp, who represented James in the matter, went to work.

In court papers moving to quash the subpoena, Kemp said there was no need to subpoena James for the records, because his former law firm had turned over what had been requested.

Kemp also pointed out that Greenberg Traurig should have had no trouble finding James because the firm also was representing James and the Frias companies and knew exactly where he worked. Kemp argued the firm had an obvious conflict of interest trying to get its own client held in contempt.

Not surprisingly, the matter was resolved in James’ favor before last Wednesday’s hearing, following a private 40-minute discussion between Kemp and Greenberg Traurig lawyers on a fourth-floor outdoor balcony at the courthouse.

Kemp told the discovery commissioner in court that Greenberg Traurig had agreed to have the subpoena quashed. The firm’s lawyers weren’t talking afterward.