Judge allows evidence Nathan Carman inheritance fight into boat insurance case

Jan. 29--PROVIDENCE -- A federal magistrate judge is allowing evidence from a New Hampshire case accusing Nathan Carman of slaying his mother and grandfather to be used in insurance companies' legal quest to deny Carman's claim for a sunken boat.

U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Patricia A. Sullivan on Tuesday agreed to allow Carman's testimony from a New Hampshire case challenging his right to an $11-million inheritance to be used in the court battle over whether insurance companies must pay his $85,000 claim for the 31-foot aluminum Chicken Pox. That boat sank in September 2016 after it departed Ram Point Marina. While Carman was rescued a week later on a life raft, his mother, Linda, was never seen again and is presumed dead.

Carman's aunts are trying to block his inheritance in a case in New Hampshire that alleges that he shot his millionaire grandfather to death in 2013 and killed his mother.

Sullivan on Tuesday allowed boat insurers -- National Liability & Fire Insurance Co. and the Boat Owners Association of The United States -- to get Carman's sworn statements in that case as well as a Windsor, Conn., police investigation into the unsolved shooting death of his real estate developer grandfather, John Chakalos.

Sullivan, too, allowed the insurers to argue a "single scheme theory," namely that the deaths of Chaklos and Linda Carman, the sinking of the boat and the disappearance of key evidence, such as the gun and the boat are all linked are evidence of Carman's fraud. They allege that it was Carman who made faulty repairs that caused the boat to take on water and then failed to call for help.

Carman has denied the allegations in the hotly contested case in U.S. District Court.

The arguments have been unusual in their acrimony, to such a degree that Sullivan on Tuesday accused Carman's lawyer, David F. Anderson, of misconduct and violating court rules.

Sullivan said Tuesday that she found the transcript of Carman's deposition in the insurance case "shocking" and "deeply disturbing." She faulted Anderson for obstructing the court's truth seeking functions by interfering in the lawyers' questioning of Carman about his purchase of a Sig Sauer that is alleged to be involved in his grandfather's death. Witness coaching, she said, is prohibited by the courts.

"I was shocked by what I read," Sullivan said of the transcript, which remains under seal.

"I'm not suggesting I'm an angel," Anderson said, adding that it's his obligation to object.

Sullivan accused of defendant of "improperly stringing things along."

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