Indy lawyer Paul Ogden writes a blog and challenges authority regularly. Today (Thursday) he threw a punch at the Disciplinary Commission with this blog post.
His trial before the Indiana Supreme Court is next Tuesday, July 30.
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But Alex, Don’t forget to Fight the cases you are hired to fight.
Alex Voils was hired to fight an insurance company for benefits as the company denied the client’s claim in 2005. In 2009, after repeated requests for action, the client fired Voils. Then he failed to provide the file to new counsel and he ignored the Disciplinary Commission’s request for a response to the grievance.
The parties agreed on discipline of 30 days suspension with automatic reinstatement. The court suggested that punishment might have been more severe if there had not been an agreement. They agreed that Voils violated three rules:
1.3: Failure to act with reasonable diligence and promptness. 1.16(d): Failure promptly to return to a client case file materials to which the client is entitled after termination of representation. 8.1(b): Failure to respond in a timely manner to the Commission’s demands for information.
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Disability Suspension
We don’t see too many of these, and as the Boomers age, and the Greatest Generation ages even more, we may see these with more regularity. Indy lawyer Mary K. Kleiss was accused by the Disc. Comm. of being disabled “by reason of physical or mental illness or infirmity, or because of the use of or addiction to intoxicants or drugs.” No more is described. Kleiss filed an Affidavit of Consent to the Disability Suspension.
The Supreme Court accepted the filings and suspended Kleiss under the A&D Rule 23(25), and ordered that she may petition for reinstatement upon the termination of the disability. Good Luck.
Arthur J. Usher IV was a Bose partner when his troubles started, a Kreig DeVault partner when everything blew up, now he is out of BIGLAW, and out of the profession for a while.
In what sounds like the plot line of a cheap romance novel, Usher got focused on a woman at Bose, and went overboard in a really weird way. If you have the time you have to read the story here. Long story short, he got infatuated, rebuffed and went ballistic, trying to destroy “Jane Doe” and her career. He recruited his paralegal to help him further the campaign. He used fictitious emails to spread his bizarre tale, trying to cost Doe her career at Bose, and elsewhere.
His actions started in 2008, the opinion was issued May 17, 2013. I can only imagine the nearly 5 years of trouble that Jane Doe has put up with waiting on a resolution. There was a civil lawsuit, and it appears to have settled on the courthouse steps with “a payment of an undisclosed amount to [Doe]”. The Supreme Court did not allow that to take the place of the disciplinary process.
The Court found violations of Rules 3.3(a)(1) Candor to tribunal, false statements, 8.1(a) False statement Bar application or Disciplinary Process, 8.1(b) failure to disclose facts to correct, 8.4(a, b, c, & d) Misconduct of various stripes. The Court found for him, agreeing with the Hearing Officer, that his problem was with Jane Doe, and not with all women, which would have been a violation of 8.4(g)
The disciplinary ruling: For Respondent’s professional misconduct, the Court suspends Respondent from the practice of law in this state for a period of not less than three years, without automatic reinstatement, beginning June 28, 2013.
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A Chicago law firm, Prenda Law Inc., found a spot as innovative lawyers or scoundrels. A California federal judge decided that scoundrels fit, better than lawyers. A fight is going on. On one side is a self-professed millionaire copyright lawyer and his team, who have sued over 20,000 for illegally downloading pornography, the other a judge who says it is a scam and shakedown effort.
Now the judge has reported the team to disciplinary groups, and to the federal prosecutors for RICO violations. He says the team identifies alleged copyright infringers by IP addresses, it then alleges that the download of porn occurred, in a demand letter that requests an amount “just below the cost of a bare-bones defense” to the suit, if the alleged infringer does not settle. Public embarrassment to a person’s reputation forces settlement, whether there was a violation or not. Hundreds of lawsuits were filed when payment did not come. These lawsuits are unraveling. At a recent hearing before the trial judge, the plaintiffs’ lawyers from Prenda took the Fifth Amendment, to avoid subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution. Not a good step in any case.
The lawyers who started representing Prenda have bailed out of the case, the appellate court is not telling the district judge to back off, One lawyer is alleged to have committed identity theft in getting a named party for the suits filed. Just a mess, as reported in AM LAW’s daily digest and Forbes.
h/t Patrick Olmstead.
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Two things: 1) PWP FB page: If you haven’t seen the recent FB page for the law firm Peterson Waggoner & Perkins, LLP you have missed the Run in a Dress for MS photo. Having fun, raising funds, and supporting family. https://www.facebook.com/PetersonWaggonerPerkinsLLP
2) Glitch: In starting this blog entry, the little finger on my right hand missed the Shift Key, hitting the Return Key. Somehow that published part of the title to the blog entry for this week. My apologies for filling in your mailbox/reader.
Can you believe this guy is [might once again be] a lawyer?
It is reportedly a heart stopping moment, you get a certified letter from the Disciplinary Commission inviting you to explain some complaint made against you. It has to be even more disconcerting when the Commission files, and serves you with its Verified Complaint; now you are past the informal opportunity to solve the problem.
The Best Practice is to hire a competent lawyer to help you at the first letter, but if you don’t, then hire one at the complaint stage – you failed to get yourself off, get help.
Before you go to lunch, find someone, call and set an appointment. Do not go out for the afternoon golf game. Save your license.
Jeffery Fetters had even been through the process before. In 2012 he started down a path he had previously walked in 2005. This time he did not read the A&D Rules that govern the disciplinary process. He misfiled his answer to the complaint. The misfiled answer did not meet the standards for an answer to a complaint. He apparently took the whole process lightly.
Just like he took the duty of effectively representing his client in the eviction process. He won the immediate eviction hearing, but did nothing after that, and eventually refused to talk to the client about the problems.
The court found the following violations:
The Court finds that Respondent violated these Indiana Professional Conduct Rules prohibiting the following misconduct:
1.2(a): Failure to abide by a client’s decisions concerning the objectives of representation.
1.3: Failure to act with reasonable diligence and promptness.
1.4(a)(3): Failure to keep a client reasonably informed about the status of a matter.
1.4(b): Failure to explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit a client to make informed decisions.
8.1(a): Knowingly making a false statement of material fact to the Disciplinary Commission in connection with a disciplinary matter.
Lots of failures there, and no effective way to answer the allegations because he did not follow the rules, or hire a competent lawyer to assist him.
What do you think the Court did? Answer is below.
DLA Piper in More Trouble
In March, I reported the biggest of the BIGLAW firms that may have gotten caught engaging in serious bill padding. And this was a billing problem of the magnitude of a $200,000 over-estimate, and it was as much as $675,000 in dispute. The NY Times article updating us on the value of the dispute now is here.
One rule of being a smart lawyer is to be real careful before deciding to “sue a client for fees.” It is on many of the “do not ever do this” lists right before “fool around with the staff, nobody will ever know,” and after “what is a small loan from the trust account going to hurt.” There are a lot of reasons, not to sue a client, and I will mention a couple illustrated by this case:
1 – you already created a litigation tiger and now you grabbed him by the tail. Clients going through a lawsuit are often seriously ticked off, and to then be sued by your lawyers, the people you put your trust in, really gets under most clients’ skin.
2 – if you sue your client, be sure that you don’t have a smoking gun in the file, or on the computer. That means you don’t have anything that suggests, let alone shows that you were padding the bill or committing malpractice or ethical violations, or anything else, anywhere in a letter, an email, an interoffice communication, or on a scratch pad. Discovery is getting good.
If you think your client owes you $675K, then the client probably has the resources to spend another $500K searching your database.
Another reason to use a smaller firm?
The Times quotes a “billing ethics professor” (I did not know we have ethics professors who specialize in billing matters – but now know why we do) in this paragraph:
In a survey of about 250 lawyers that Professor Ross conducted in 2007, more than half acknowledged that the prospect of billing extra time influenced their decision to perform pointless assignments, such as doing excessive legal research or extraneous document review. There is also the issue of “featherbedding,” he said, or throwing armies of bodies at every problem.
When your law firm does not have “armies of bodies” hanging around looking for something to do, the “featherbedding” issue is mooted to a great extent. And when your lawyer or small team of lawyers, that you know by name, are working on your matter, the thought of performing “pointless assignments” is not near as tempting as it might be if you are teaching a large class of first year lawyers the ways of research or the firm’s ethics of billing.
The most recent news in the case?
His [Victor’s] lawyer, Larry Hutcher at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, amended the countersuit last week to include a fraud claim and a request for $22.5 million in punitive damages, a number representing 1 percent of DLA Piper’s reported revenue last year. (my emphasis)
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The other end of the Canada case.
Last week we discussed the Canada case, where the fees, though flat, were earned, and upon the client’s demand did not need to be returned. Octavia Snulligan did not understand that rule before Canada was decided.
She too requested a flat fee, but did not appear to do the work required, or at least she could not satisfy the client that she was doing the work that was expected. After five months she was fired, and the client wanted part of her retainer money back. Snulligan refused, and when she was asked for an invoice, she crafted one. She, like many lawyers do not keep time sheets, but she created one anyway, and showed 37.8 hours of work, in 32 entries. 28 of the entries were for “Document Review” without further explanation. The hearing officer, the commission and the Supreme Court were all unimpressed with the reconstructed time records.
So unimpressed that it was the most serious aggravating factor found. It was “calculated to mislead the Family, the Commission and the Hearing Officer” said the Supreme Court.
Snulligan got a retainer of $6,000 on a flat fee of $12,000. She had the case for five months and said she had worked it. The court said she failed to refund the unearned portion, which the hearing officer calculated as $5,000 in unearned fees of the $6,000 she had received.
The court goes out of its way to say that a “$12,000 total fee, or her collection of $6,000 of that fee before she was terminated would [not] have been unreasonable” if she had been able to complete the representation. But she did not, she was discharged and had not met the Realtor’s Rule of getting to the close before getting fired by the client.
Another good discussion on fee issues by the court, helping the bar to better understand where the line of good behavior ends before you get into bad behavior.
What do you think the Court did? Answer is below.
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Fetters got Six month suspension without automatic reinstatement [follow link to find out about automatic reinstatement], with a requirement for restitution for reinstatement.
Snulligan got a 30 day suspension without automatic reinstatement, but with a proviso that if she refunds the $5,000 in overcharged fees, she may petition for immediate reinstatement.
The legal field is struggling with the proper method of billing for legal services. There are a number of ways, mostly broken down into the following styles: Contingency, Hourly, Value Pricing and some hybrids such as menu billing or flat fee billing.
Each method has its critics, and the Indiana State Bar Association recently held a session at its Annual Meeting on “The Future of Legal Fees.” MS lawyer and ABA bestselling author Mark Chinn was the presenter. One fear expressed there was that Value Pricing fees could run afoul of ethics issues.
Any system of billing can run afoul of ethical issues. The primary breach is in the lawyer, not the system. “But lead me not into temptation…” Michael Murphy, a Massachusetts lawyer, learned the hard way. He was a salary lawyer for an unnamed law firm. On at least two cases he “knowingly spent more time than necessary” in order to increase his billables. He reviewed materials multiple times, often for hearings that had not been scheduled yet. He billed for time performing tasks that “should have been delegated” to lower cost lawyers at smaller billing rates. He billed for performing tasks that others had performed. Author John Conlon regularly writes about the problem for clients about misallocation of duties between higher priced lawyers and the lower priced associates or non-lawyer staff.
Murphy’s firm refunded the fees, and wrote off unpaid bills, but Murphy got a Year and A Day suspension. Rumor has it that this kind of billing problem occurs with enough frequency that it should be discussed in biglaw and small firm settings, and forbidden by policy. The Mass. Court found the fees charged was a violation of Rules 1.5(a) and 8.4(c).
H/T Andy Perkins
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106 Paragraphs in the Ethics Complaint => Suspension
Illness does not give you a “Free Pass” card. Kjell Engebretsen, a Boone County, IN lawyer appears to have struggled for years in representing his clients. The battles may have had to do with depression or other illnesses, but were manifested in his refusal to do the clients’ legal work, or to cooperate with the Disciplinary Commission.
The charges included: neglecting clients’ cases, failing to do the work for which he was hired, failing to communicate with clients, failing to inform clients that medical problems would severely limit his ability to represent them, failing to inform clients of court orders and hearings, failing to appear at hearings and a pretrial conference, unilaterally terminating his representation of clients without protecting the clients’ interests, failing to refund unearned fees, and failing to cooperate with the Commission.
This is the fifth action against the respondent filed by the DC, and there may have been others not filed before the 2008 matter. At the time of this Order he was on two other suspensions (failure to pay costs, and non-cooperation with a show cause order), and did not respond to the charges filed here.
The Court found violations of the following Rules of Professional Conduct:
1.3: Failure to act with reasonable diligence and promptness.
1.4(a)(3): Failure to keep a client reasonably informed about the status of a matter.
1.4(a)(4): Failure to comply promptly with a client’s reasonable requests for information.
1.4(b): Failure to explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit a client to make informed decisions.
1.16(d): Failure to protect a client’s interests upon termination of representation.
1.16(d): Failure to refund an unearned fee upon termination of representation.
3.2: Failure to expedite litigation consistent with the interests of a client.
8.1(b): Failure to respond in a timely manner to the Commission’s demands for information.
8.4(c): Engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.
Pick your Battles Carefully, Especially When You get the Lede
Vikrant Pawar, a NYC lawyer had to file the suit. His honor apparently was tested by the allegation. Then the slap-down hits. As reported in the New York Law Journal [full story behind a paywall]:
“The charge of stealing a $6.95 order of chicken wings, hardly constitutes that of a serious crime,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Louis York wrote, holding that Vikrant Pawar had not made a sufficient case that the charge amounted to slander.
So an event that merited the attention of Pawar’s family and staff, and the owner of the Wings Shop, has now been made a record in the courts, and in the popular legal media. Now we know he was accused of stealing chicken wings, and that the court does not find that charge to be an insult to his integrity.
Maybe the better resolution was to pay the tab, tip the waiter and stay quiet. H/T Patrick Olmstead.
Lawyers with Troubles 