RALEIGH, NC (AP) — The speaker of the North Carolina state House of Representatives is being sued by a local elected official who alleges the powerful Republican ruined his marriage by having an affair with his wife.
Scott Lassiter’s attorneys allege that for more than three years President Tim Moore “deliberately interfered with the marital relationship” between Lassiter and his wife, who runs an agency within the state court system.
Moore has rejected Lassiter’s claims. Moore, who has been elected to five terms in office since 2015, is the state representative the longest-serving Speaker of the House.
Lassiter wants at least $200,000 in punitive and compensatory damages against Moore and another unidentified man who Lassiter says conspired with Moore in recent weeks to install a camera outside Lassiter’s suburban Raleigh home.
Moore used his position as “one of North Carolina’s most powerful elected officials to lure plaintiff’s wife … into an illicit relationship with him,” says the lawsuit filed over the weekend in North Carolina County Superior Court. Wake.
Lassiter’s lawsuit alleges that his wife, Jamie Liles Lassiter, would not end her relationship with Moore for fear of losing her job, which led to their separation in January after more than nine years of marriage.
In a statement, Moore said it was “an unsubstantiated claim by a troubled person. We will vigorously defend this action and pursue all available legal remedies.”
Jamie Lassiter is executive director of the North Carolina Conference of Clerks of Superior Courts. She called the lawsuit “outrageous and defamatory” and said her husband is “lashing out” at the end of their divorce proceedings.
“The claims are not only false but impossible, as we have been separated with a signed separation document for years,” he said in a press release from his lawyer. “I am a strong professional woman, and the only person who has ever abused me or threatened my career was my future ex-husband.”
North Carolina is one of the few states that still allows marooned spouse lawsuits seeking damages from a cheating spouse’s lover under claims of alienation of affection and criminal conversation, also known as adultery. These and other claims are found in Lassiter’s lawsuit, which alleges Moore was “willfully pursuing a sexual relationship” and “with reckless disregard for the destruction he was causing” to the marriage.
Lassiter, deputy principal of the Wake County School System, was a former Apex city council member and a current elected member of the county’s little-known soil and water conservation board. The Republican ran briefly for a state House seat last year before suspending his campaign when the districts were redrawed.
“The complaint speaks for itself,” Lassiter’s attorney, Alicia Jurney, wrote in an email Monday in response to denials by Moore and Lassiter’s wife. “There is irrefutable evidence to support Mr. Lassiter’s claims.”
According to the lawsuit, Lassiter watched his wife in December and obtained evidence that she and Moore dined in Raleigh and spent several hours together.
The lawsuit says his wife confessed to the affair and Moore admitted to the affair a few days later when he and Lassiter met at a Raleigh breakfast restaurant. The Lassiters separated a couple of weeks later, the lawsuit says.
The North Carolina Superior Court Clerks Conference is designed to help elected clerks in all 100 counties carry out their duties.
Moore, who is divorced with two grown children, is an attorney and has represented a region west of Charlotte for 20 years. He was not on the dais on the Chamber floor when the chamber held a business session Tuesday morning. Votes are expected in the room on Wednesday. The General Assembly is in the early weeks of its main annual business session.
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