Consumers who need protection from their lawyers dept.: “A Staten Island, N.Y., judge has ordered an attorney to return the passport of her Sri Lankan client, comparing the lawyer’s refusal to give back the passport until she is paid her fees to holding the client hostage.” It would seem that passport-withholding is by no means an unknown tactic for lawyers wishing to make sure their fees get paid; in a 1987 decision from the Southern District of New York, U.S. v. Bakhtiar, a federal court even opined that it saw that it saw “nothing unethical or shocking” about the practice. However, Civil Court Judge Philip S. Straniere in his unreported small claims opinion disagreed with the reasoning of Bakhtiar. The client in the case, who had retained the lawyer in a child custody proceeding, was named was Chandrani Goonewardene; Judge Straniere declined to release the lawyer’s name in his opinion, “instead referring to her by the pseudonym ‘Amanda Bonner.’ (Amanda Bonner is also the name of the attorney played by Katharine Hepburn in the film ‘Adam’s Rib.’)” (Mark Fass, “Judge Orders Attorney to Return Passport Held in Fee Dispute”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 23).

Filed under: ethics