Be Careful Helping your Friends – Sharing with Friends – Treating Staff and Litigants

When is a Lawyer just a Friend — in trouble?

Jameson Conrad was with a friend on New Year’s Eve, in Charleston WV. Conrad’s friend got into a dispute with another man, and used his gun to make his point. The shooting was caught on tape. Conrad then used his lawyerly skills to advise friend to “run,” he then kept friend’s cell phone and refused to identify friend when police asked.

When you are a fact witness, it is hard to claim a lawyer-client privilege, because the police think you are an “accessory to malicious wounding.” It might work, we will know in several months.

But, upon these facts, WV Bar Counsel alto thinks you are enough of a menace to make a prompt Complaint to the Investigation Commission, seeking suspension from the practice, and to report it when asked by the local paper.

H/T Gary Welsh.

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Who do YOU Trust with your Client’s Secrets?

It is only a little secret. Something you learned while working with the world’s most famous writer. Surely your wife’s best friend can be trusted not to tell what you should not have told her.  But she told, and now you pay, in a couple of ways.

JK Rowling has been known to write some pretty good books, sold millions of books, and movie tickets from the Harry Potter series.  She ought to be able to trust her secrets to her solicitors.  But Robert Galbraith’s identity was not safe with Christopher Gossage, one of her lawyers.  Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym Rowling used on a new book she wrote, trying to see if she could enjoy writing without the hype and expectations of her name.  She was displeased, even though the book sales jumped after the word was leaked by the trusted friend of Gossage’s wife.

The law firm fell on the sword, quickly admitting that Gossage had shared the information with Judith Callegari during a private conversation. “The disclosure was made in confidence to someone he trusted implicitly.”  Not a great judge of character there.

Who do you trust implicitly enough to turn your license over for their discretion? The Solicitors Regulation Authority in England fined Gossage £ 1,000. for the breach of confidentiality.  Rowlings charged even more.

There was a winner in this matter. “The Soldiers Charity” was the recipient of all the book proceeds, plus the settlement damages Gossage and his firm, as well as his trusted friend paid to Ms. Rowling. Nice touch.  Hard for a billionaire to get much in the way of sympathy for herself.

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Judge Suspended for Treatment of Staff, Lawyers and Litigants.

The Judge Kimberly Brown story is a big story in Indiana legal circles. She has been through a protracted hearing before the Master Panel to determine a recommended punishment, based on a multi-count complaint of judicial misconduct. She was reported to have mistreated staff, lawyers and litigants in unusual and contemptible ways.

The Master Panel has recommended her removal in spite of some clever legal maneuvering by her new lawyer-team, after firing her earlier team of lawyers.  Now the Supreme Court has temporarily suspended Judge Brown and will take further action in due course.  Her suspension, as recommended is with pay.

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Ted Waggoner will be offering the annual kickoff session to the IVY Tech Agricultural Seminar Series on Jan. 22, at the Cole campus in Logansport. The topic – Family Farm Ownership: What is the Right Solution for You and Your Family. For more information, contact Julie Byrd at IVY Tech, 765-459-0651 x 288.

Slap for not Following Trial or Appellate Rules; CFAF & Attorney Surrogate Issues: Outing your Client, not a good thing: Let’s Party

Lawyers Need to Know (or read) and Follow Rules

It seems to be painful to be a stickler for rules (which appellate judges often are) and read some appellate submissions.  From time to time the Court of Appeals will send a subtle message to the Bar about the quality of advocacy, but subtly was not the tool used in Judge Bradford’s opinion in Duensing v. Johnson.  The appellate lawyer was 3 for 3 in footnotes admonishing him for rules violations or for confusing the court. A couple other chiding comments come through over the weakness of the arguments submitted.

Appellee lawyer also took a shot for citing a NFP opinion as authority for an argument as well.

Read the case and remember that some trial judges also expect the lawyers to know the difference between different kinds of motions made at different times in the trial.

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Hamilton the Birdman – Two Lessons in One Headline:  What do you know about CFAF? How are you with the Attorney Surrogate Rule?

Bradley Hamilton, a Kokomo lawyer appears to have closed shop and fled to Australia.  He had some notoriety in the Howard County area for his willingness to “flip the bird” to news cameras.  The story reports that several clients had paid funds to Hamilton, and may have lost their retainers.  No criminal charges have yet been filed.

Local Kokomo lawyer Brent Dechert is stepping up to help the clients of Hamilton.  He filed a Petition for Appointment of an Attorney Surrogate* to allow him to access the files and trust account of Hamilton.  The Petition was granted and Dechert has given public notice of the appointment.  This results in the clients getting their files back, or transferred to a new lawyer who will work with them on their matters. Dechert said that he does not handle the kinds of cases Hamilton did, so there is little likelihood that he will take over many of the cases.

Not reported in the article is the existence of the Clients Financial Assistance Fund, of the Indiana State Bar Association.**  The fund, created by the  ISBA several decades ago, provides a partial remedy to those clients who have had funds stolen from them by their lawyer.  An individual client can recover up to $15,000 with a standing cap of $50,000  total reimbursement for all client losses due to the acts of a single lawyer.

The CFAF committee meets as needed (and fortunately it is not needed too often) to consider and investigate claims.  The funds in the CFAF are a part of the annual dues of ISBA members. The claim application is available.at the ISBA website here.

*  I am chair of the ISBA Special Committee on Attorney Surrogate Rule

**  I served more than ten years as a member of the Clients Financial Assistance Fund Committee for the ISBA.

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Sharing evidence on YouTube can get you suspended.

An IL lawyer thought his client was entrapped by police in a drug bust, so he posted the undercover video taken by the police online.  He titled the video  “Cops and Task Force Planting Drugs.”

By doing so he exposed a confidential informant of the police department, and he violated the client’s confidentiality without informed consent. The Disciplinary Counsel also accused Jesse Raymond Gilsdorf of Mount Sterling, IL with implying police wrongdoing without evidence to back up the charge.

Apparently he watched the video on a small monitor and thought it showed entrapment, but after posting the video, and then seeing the recording on a large screen monitor realized it proved the client’s guilt. She took a plea, he got charged.

The IL Hearing Board recommended a five month suspension of Gilsdorf’s license.  We will see what happens.

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Party in Rochester, courtesy of PWP

This Friday, the Peterson Waggoner & Perkins law firm will host “A Grand Night for Music III.” It is an occasional celebration for clients and friends of the law firm  The Atlanta Music Hall Band, straight from Atlanta Music Hall in Atlanta IN, will perform Swing and Jazz standards, and the dance floor will be out. Love to have you here. Call the office for tickets.

Legal Websites with Comments – Strike Back at Critical Client? What are these Sites? Fake a Review?

Social Media is a Tool, You are a Lawyer, Don’t be the Fool

So a lawyer in the Chicago area Betty Tsamis, is active with AVVO, a lawyer rating site.  Her AVVO page is here. She has a 6.2 rating, pretty good.  Tsamis handled a case for a client, Rinehart and appealed his denial of Unemployment Benefits case against American Airlines, and the case did not go well, which happens.  Whose fault?  It depends on who you believe.  Client wrote an unfavorable review and said that he paid her fee, which she took “knowing full well” he would lose the case.

The trouble for the lawyer came about when Tsamis replied with facts and information that she got during the confidential client communications. The details are here. She stated in the reply to his review that he had beaten up a woman co-worker, and not advised her of that before she filed the appeal. (If you beat up co-workers, you usually do not get UE coverage).  The IL disciplinary office has filed charges for breaching Rule 1.6 of the RPC.  Tsamis still posts replies to critical comments, but they are now toned down.

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The Ratings Game – Martindale Hubbell to AVVO to Super Lawyer to Yelp, and beyond.

Lawyer ratings were once the sacred province of now absorbed publisher Martindale-Hubbell. Today there are several lawyer and law firm ratings sites,  Avvo (above) offers ratings on lawyers and other professionals. [full disclosure, my AVVO rating linked here]  AVVO seems the most aggressive of the new generation.  MH did the same kind of ratings, but in the old days, the rating was bound in a series of books taking up 5-6 feet of library shelf space and costing hundreds of dollars and updated yearly, but MH is now is found online at http://www.martindale.com {my martindale.com rating is here].  AVVO allows client comments, as does Martindale. Both sites focus on lawyers and other professionals.

Another new entrant in the legal and medical fields does it differently. SuperLawyers.com names what it calls the “super lawyers” in most of the states. It works with magazine publishers and sends out ad-filled supplements annually on lawyers nominated and selected as the best.  [full disclosure – I am told I have been nominated, but I have not been selected as a super lawyer (or as a colleague calls them “the superest duperest lawyers”) in Indiana]. There are several ethics opinions on the propriety of advertising the designation. Most states seem to have lost interest in prosecuting this issue, even though there are regulations on lawyer advertising.

Yelp offers webpages for most businesses in the country, in an online “yellow page” style that gives the business name, address, phone number, and then lets customers comment on every business in town, from spas to restaurants and lawyers. The business owner can claim the page and edit the information about the business.

Breach of Yelp’s Policy

San Francisco lawyer Julian McMillan stands accused of taking the review matter just a step further, by allegedly having his staff create and post favorable reviews.  Favorable reviews are hard to come by, and may have a positive economic benefit to the lawyer praised. As Ms. Tsamis can attest, unfavorable reviews may have more impact.

So Yelp claims that it monitors and prosecutes businesses and now lawyers who abuse the comments policy. It should be noted that McMillan responds that he had sued Yelp and won in the trial court on an advertising contract dispute.  He suggests this is payback by Yelp.

We will see how this comes out over the next few months.

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Ernie the Attorney’s take on these matters!

The leading blogger in the legal field, Ernie the Attorney and I were discussing the “dangerous tool” of social media last week.  I do not agree with ethics guru Stephen Gillers, that all lawyers should avoid social media, and who Ernie takes apart in this post (else I would not be posting here).

Any tool can be dangerous.  Lawyers get trained  to look out for danger in every area of life. I advocate removing dangerous tools from idiots and infants, who are found in lots of places.

I hope there are few idiots and no infants among the lawyers who are posting on any of the social media sites. But still be careful out there, and learn how to run spell checker on the site.

Neglect gets 3 years; Lawyer arrested for fraud?; Report your Sex Offender Client? NY says no!

There must have been neglect, statement of proof in the opinion would be nice.

Louis Denney eventually had four DI cases filed, one for each year of 2008, 2009, 2010, and finally one in 2011 that did him in. Unfortunately the Order reads more like a CCS entry, so it is hard to tell what all Denney did. We are told that the Hearing Officer, Judge Jeff Todd issued a 56 page report, Denney appealed and was heard by the Supreme Court, and the court adopted that Report, but we just get a snippet of info on Counts 2,5,7 and 9. The court found violations of Rules 1.2(a), 1.3, 1.4(a) & (b), 1.5(a), 1.15(d), 1.16(a)(3) & (d), 3.1, 3.2, 3.4(c), 4.4(a), 5.4(a), 8.1(b) and 8.4(b).  Denney was a busy guy, and apparently  neglected many of his cases. He did fight the allegations and the Hearing Officer report, but the final order does not offer many details.

There is no link to the 56 page report, so what we know is that Denney: charged unreasonable fees, neglected client cases, failed to do the work for which he was hired, failed to communicate, refused to return unearned fees, disobeyed court orders for accountings, and made scandalous and irrelevant accusations against a judge when the judge refused a continuance, in an attempt to remove the judge from the case.

As a result he is suspended from the practice for three years without automatic reinstatement, and we know  that Justice Rucker would have approved a one year suspension, and Justice David would have disbarred Denney.

What we don’t know that would be educational for lawyers who review disciplinary matters is: How many total counts were found against the respondent; were any counts found for the respondent; what time frame was Denney committing violations, and did he continue to violate the duty to clients after the 2008 complaint (which resulted from his failure to respond to grievance), and was the 2008 issue (or the ’09 or ’10 issues) wrapped into the 2011 matters? Were any clients made whole during this matter or will the ISBA’s Client’s Financial Assistance Fund be involved, if the clients are aware of this benefit?

I imagine writing disciplinary opinions is difficult, but we could learn more if more information and judicial reasoning was put on display in the opinions that are issued. Especially after a well fought hearing.

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Lawyer Arrested for Benefits Fraud…

Shawn Donahue pleaded not guilty to fraud in Harrison County recently.  The Louisville Courier Journal’s story called it welfare fraud, but it appears to be unemployment compensation benefits at issue.

The allegations are that Donahue received UE benefits while still working for a couple local entities that were paying him for legal work. It is alleged that he failed to disclose the earnings. Donahue’s lawyer, Bart Betteau predicted that his client would be cleared of the charges.

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NY Opinion, Lawyer not required to Report Inaccurate reports by Sex Offender

Legal services lawyer is contacted by potential client PC, who is a registered sex offender.  Lawyer is asked to review an administrative filing, made under penalty of perjury, to a state agency. She does, and in confirming the information submitted determines that the allegation of being a felon is inadequate, because pc did not disclose the sex offender status of Level Three Rapist, and pc did not register as required by law, under his properly spelled name.  PC  did not appear for appointment, so Agency decided not to represent him further, but did not report the evidence it found to the agency.

Should lawyer have reported the findings to the state agency? NY Ethics Committee says No! (see Opinion 963) Rules of Professional Conduct # 1.6 deals with confidentiality of client communications, and if PC had not become a client, Rule 1.18 carries duties to prospective clients. The rub is that Rule 3.3 “Conduct before a Tribunal” puts duties to disclose confidential information on lawyers, if the situation meets the standards. Here it is a close call, but since the lawyer did not appear before the tribunal, but only reviewed information submitted to it, and the submission was not by the lawyer, the committee finds that “It would not make sense to require a lawyer to take reasonable remedial measures regarding proceedings before a tribunal in which the lawyer has never appeared on behalf of the client.”

But does the lawyer have to report the failure to register properly with the police?  Rule 1.6(b)(2) in NY and in Indiana, is a permissive rule.  “A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary: (2) to prevent the client from committing a crime… and in furtherance of which the client has used or is using the lawyer’s services” (Ind. Rule).  NY’s Rule 1.6 does not have the “and in furtherance” language.  Indiana’s does which makes it even less likely that a disclosure would be appropriate even with the permissive disclosure language.

In NY the committee previously opined that past crimes cannot be revealed under this provision, only future crimes. Either way there is no mandatory disclosure, but a permissive disclosure in NY looks to be less risky than in Indiana, where there was no use of the lawyer’s services in furtherance of the misreporting.

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Jeffersonville INNS of Court meeting

Thursday March 21, Ted Waggoner will attend the Jeffersonville IN Inns of Court meeting at the invitation of Judge Terry Cody to speak on the Indiana Attorney Surrogate Rule, and its application to lawyers and law firms.  Ted chairs the Attorney Surrogate Rule Special Committee of the ISBA. 

Contact me for more information about this important rule.