Copyright SlashGear
After being arrested for contempt of court earlier in the month, Diesel Brothers co-star David "Heavy D" Sparks has now been released from federal custody. Sparks was taken into custody on Oct. 7 after a federal judge claimed he and his co-defendants had allegedly failed to pay nearly $850,000 in court-ordered legal fees to Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE). It's all part of Sparks' ongoing lawsuit with the nonprofit group. The UPHE initially sued Sparks and others all the way back in 2017, alleging they'd tampered with emissions-control devices on the diesel trucks featured on the show. While the physicians' group is not a government agency, the federal court has nevertheless ruled in its favor in the past, which is how Sparks and others got put on the hook for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in the first place. Court records (per KSL) show that both sides reached an agreement during a contempt hearing last week, which is what ultimately led to Sparks being released from custody. According to those same records, Sparks and his legal team now have to provide disclosures to UPHE within 10 days. In the contempt order filed Oct. 2, the court made note of the fact that Sparks and co. have allegedly not paid any amount toward the fees since the 2021 ruling. Jailing him was allegedly a last resort to try and get him to fork over what's owed. Sparks alleges that the UPHE's lawyers used the Clean Air Act for their own personal profit; a position Sparks and his legal team claim to have evidence to back up. In a social media post on Facebook, he went on to say: "This was not about me refusing to pay money that I rightfully owed. This was about standing up to a broken system ... and if I didn't fight back, it would just leave this door open for [the system] to continue doing as they've done ... over the past decade or so." Sparks and his Diesel Brothers co-star David "Diesel Dave" Kiley were first discovered on YouTube by former late night talk show host and big-time car collector Jay Leno. This discovery led to them landing a Discovery Channel show that ran for eight seasons between 2016 and 2022. In the years since then, Sparks has continued to upload videos to YouTube, including ones that cover his ongoing legal battle.
