Laechelin said Foster "thinks someone at the jail cares enough about all this to listen to the phones and say, 'Oooh, someone's calling Miss Foster' and click, hang up on them."
Joel Androphy, Foster's attorney, said, "They claim Debra Foster is paranoid. Anyone would be paranoid if the people you're competing with is the sheriff and the law enforcement of the county you're working in." He said the deletion of computer files "permeates this entire case and shows the county cannot be trusted."
Daniel Kramer
Foster has the prime location for a bail bond business:
across the street from the jail.
Daniel Kramer
Sheriff Guy Williams on a promotional card
Related Content
More About
He noted that the computer expert had determined that, as the expert put it, "Montgomery County has from time to time blocked phone calls to Miss Foster's business."
The temporary injunction hearing had been somewhat strange from the start, beyond Hittner's decision to hear a wide range of evidence. Temporary injunctions are issued to force someone to stop doing something that is causing irreparable harm before a case reaches trial.
Foster said on the stand that the county's new phone system, which features speed-dialing to bond companies, was fine. (Whether the old system harmed her financially would be an issue for the trial, not for an injunction.) Evidence failed to show that Williams or other named county employees directly ordered such actions as dragging out the release of Foster's clients (there was testimony that included such allegations, but not involving Williams or other defendants directly).
So the county was saying it had never done anything wrong, and if it had, it definitely wasn't going to do it anymore. Hittner could only reinforce that, and he did so by issuing an injunction April 21.
He ordered the county not to block Foster's number, to list her properly in the cell, to make sure jailers do not encourage inmates to use a different company, and eight other actions that Foster claimed were occurring and the county said weren't.
"We needed something, and the next step if they don't honor it is contempt of court," Androphy said. "Now if they don't follow their rules, they'll have to answer to a federal judge."
Foster says her mother told her she's ready to stick around for the longer fight. "She said, 'I guess I better go back and make some more money,' " Foster says.
"It is taking quite a lot of money to do it," her mother says. "But I told her she should do what she needed to in order to stay in business." If Foster prevails, of course, the county might be liable for her legal fees.
And sticking around is exactly what Debra Foster intends to do, when she's not out riding his-and-her Harleys with her boyfriend of eight years.
One of her sons also owns a bail bond company in Conroe, and there are rumbles that her brother may run for sheriff in 2004.
"I plan on staying in the business," she says. "I plan on doing this for a while, and as my other kids get older, if they want to have a bonding business, they can have it."
Which means that the "big-titty blond bitch" isn't going anywhere. And Montgomery County, apparently, is just going to have to deal with it.
