Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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Doing that sort of thing is never a good idea, and now it’s drawn a three-year sentence for obstruction of justice for a former vice president at a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech company. He’s appealing the sentence as excessive. [AP, Boston Globe, Boston Herald]
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A South Carolina lawyer with expertise in “asset protection” and his associate have pleaded not guilty to federal charges over their alleged roles in an arrangement to do that; an Aiken, S.C. lawyer “pled guilty on September 18 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering for his role in the scheme.” [WISTV.com, Columbia State]
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Don’t gamble away your clients’ $2 million class action settlement on stock market day trading and lose it [Sandeep Baweja of Orange County, Calif., who has agreed to plead guilty; earlier]
A “judge ordered the Office of Disciplinary Counsel to lock [Allen] Feingold out of his offices” after he went on practicing law notwithstanding his suspension and eventual disbarment, even going so far as to use another lawyer’s letterhead and electronic-filing code without his permission. That was aside from the question of whether he’d earlier attempted to choke, or only attempted to strike, a judge who’d ruled against him on an arbitration matter. [Above the Law, Legal Intelligencer, AmLaw Daily]
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TaxProf: “The Tax Court yesterday denied a New York tax lawyer’s claimed $100,000+ medical expense deduction for the costs of prostitutes and pornographic material.” Earlier here. More: Gothamist last year on related state-tax enforcement action (”The state auditor also argued that ‘in addition to being illegal in New York State, these expenses are not substantiated with receipts.’”
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According to U.S. Justice Department and Colorado bar authorities, Denver immigration lawyer Ravi Kanwal was himself in the United States unlawfully. [Legal Profession Blog via Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch]
If you’re a judge annoyed at a court worker’s parking her car in a restricted parking space at the courthouse, don’t take it upon yourself to let the air out of her tires [Maryland circuit court judge Robert Nalley, who's stepping down from an administrative post but not from the bench after conceding the bit of self-help in question; Washington Post]
…steal $2.2 million by pocketing, e.g., clients’ medical and car-crash liability settlements and a real estate escrow [attorney Marc A. Bernstein, 54, of Bernstein & Bernstein LLP in Manhattan, according to two indictments; Mortgage Fraud Reporter, NY Daily News, NY Post; license suspended in April]
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Before asking a federal judge to grant preliminary approval for a class action settlement with Ameritrade over alleged privacy breaches, make sure that your “client,” the class representative, isn’t going to tell the court he opposes the settlement. In re TD Ameritrade Account Holder Litigation, Case No. C 07-2852 VRW (N.D. Cal.) ($1.87M for the attorneys, coupons for the class.).
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Attention, lawyers in the U.K. (and elsewhere): “billing for time spent actually having sex with the client is definitely frowned upon”. [Lowering the Bar, Times Online]
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Maybe we need to create some “super-Don’t” label for when a story like this comes along: “A defense attorney and former federal prosecutor whose clients have included rap stars and a soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was charged Wednesday with arranging the killing of one witness and trying to hire a hit man to kill another.” [AP/1010WINS]
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According to Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau, New York lawyer Marc Bernstein “settled these cases pretty cheap, then took the money and ran.” [NY Daily News, press release] Meanwhile: “Prominent Arkansas plaintiffs securities lawyer Gene Cauley is expected to plead guilty for failing to pay clients $9.3 million in settlement funds he was supposed to be holding as their escrow agent.” [ABA Journal, earlier] According to a report dated February (PDF) from the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility, New York is among the states that have adopted payee notification reforms intended to catch this category of fraud at an early stage; Arkansas has not. For more on payee notification, see my 2006 paper with Peter Morin.
Not necessarily a line you want on your resume as a lawyer, especially if you practice with the respectable Detroit firm of Miller Canfield.
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Don’t offer reductions in your legal fees to clients who agree to have sex with you (Florida lawyer James Harvey Tipler, disbarred over offenses that also included having “altered evidence and caused a witness to unknowingly give false testimony”, taken clients’ money and neglected their cases, and much more).
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“It is axiomatic that ‘Judge’ and ‘Stripper’ showing up in a headline is never a good thing, especially if you happen to be the ‘Judge.’” — Daniel Ruth, Tampa Tribune, via Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch (on disgraced Florida appellate judge Thomas Stringer)(earlier).
Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch (channeling Legal Profession Blog) recounts instances of bank robbery and drunken drag racing.
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Point of Law Volokh