We’ve had a lot of Montgomery Blair Sibley coverage over the years:
- His meritless suit against the DC Circuit (followed by a self-defeating appeal to the Supreme Court, where there was no quorum because he had sued seven of the justices)
- his follies in the Palfrey case and in an earlier 2006 Florida prostitution case; and
- his vexatious pro se work in family court.
And we didn’t even mention his work representing Larry Sinclair (the fellow who unsuccessfully sued Barack Obama for denying Sinclair’s implausible claim that he had engaged in a homosexual tryst with him) in a lawsuit against three anonymous bloggers. (DBKP blog, Mar. 14.)
After years of over-the-top abusive litigation, the state bar finally took action, and he has been suspended by the Florida bar for three years. No doubt, this will result in a new round of frivolous pro se collateral litigation. It took a contempt-of-court citation for failure to pay child support before the Florida bar took action, so this can hardly be considered a rousing success of the bar in policing its own, even for someone as over-the-top as Sibley. (Florida Bar v. Sibley; ABA Journal, Apr. 25; MPGS blog, May 14; h/t S.G.).
Update: Two commenters (who never appeared on Overlawyered before) implausibly defend Sibley, both posting from BellSouth accounts in Atlanta, GA. Nothing about a divorce requires one to sue seven Supreme Court justices for “judicial treason” for denying a (frivolous) certiorari petition from a frivolous lawsuit. He should have been disbarred a long time ago; that he is only being suspended, and then only because of failure to obey court orders, is appalling. He’s been a hazard to his clients and to taxpayers; so, no, I don’t think he’s a “damn good lawyer.”
Update, May 16, 2:45 AM: We originally repeated a second-hand report sent to us that Sibley had also been suspended in DC as part of reciprocal discipline. It is possible that our correspondent confused a Rule 8.1 report, made by the DC Bar counsel recommending reciprocal suspension, with an actual suspension. If a Rule 8.1 report was filed, Sibley is entitled to file a response; no oral argument is scheduled at this time (though none is required to be scheduled) and no DC Board on Professional Responsibility report is listed as having issued with respect to Sibley. Rule 8.4 of the DC Board on Professional Responsibility Rules of Procedure is titled “Conclusive Effect of Adjudication in Other Jurisdiction,” which would appear to give Sibley nothing to argue in DC, and would likely make discipline inevitable, but the District of Columbia, in its typical competence, has posted the wrong text for 8.4 on its website, so I cannot say that for certain. Montgomery Sibley is, as of May 16, still listed on the DC Bar’s website as a member in good standing. If the error is ours, rather than that of the DC Bar website, we regret the error. Without written confirmation of the suspension, we retract the original statement that the DC Bar has suspended Sibley in response to the Florida bar’s three-year suspension of Sibley.
Update, May 20: We were right the first time.
11 Comments
Good riddance, can someone suspend Larry too ?
You sound a bit jealous of Montgomery Sibley. Personal divorce problems aside…I think you’d agree, he’s a damn good lawyer.
[…] lawsuit was filed with the help of Sinclair’s new attorney, one Montgomery Blair Sibley. OverLawyered.com found where Sibley was suspended by the Florida Bar for failure to pay child support and for filing […]
This short blurb fails to notate that Mr. Sibley’s alleged vexacious litigation, is primarily the product of his personal divorce situation. Having not personally gone through such an ordeal, I can only imagine what both he, his wife, and his children went through. The law is what he knows, so he used it, perhaps improperly; this is no different than the actress who is using YouTube to go after her estranged husband: using what you know.
Having looked at other disciplinary actions, I find that a 3yr suspension for Sibley for his child support and angst at the Florida judiciary is heavy handed, when another lawyer in another state received 6 months suspension, stayed, on probation for trust account violations, etc.
The old addage– walk a mile in his shoes!
Many here seem to forget it’s not just about his suspension is not just about child support. Damn good lawyer? Gotta disagree on that one.
We’ve had a lot of Montgomery Blair Sibley coverage over the years:
His meritless suit against the DC Circuit (followed by a self-defeating appeal to the Supreme Court, where there was no quorum because he had sued seven of the justices)
his follies in the Palfrey case and in an earlier 2006 Florida prostitution case;
and his vexatious pro se work in family court.
Maybe THAT Attorney did not sue six SCOTUS Justices!!!
[…] the District of Minnesota opinion dismissing the meritless Sinclair v. Obama litigation (discussed May 15), so I have uploaded the magistrate’s thorough report and recommendation in Case No. […]
Obama’s peopleare good at talking about people’s divorces
Obama joined a field of seven candidates vying to fill an open Senate seat being vacated by retiring two-term incumbent Peter Fitzgerald. For months, he polled in the middle of the pack behind frontrunner and former securities trader Blair Hull, who spent $30 million of his own fortune on the primary.
But Hull’s campaign imploded just weeks before the election when his divorce files were unsealed, revealing an ex-wife’s charges of verbal and physical abuse.
Obama unleashed a barrage of television ads just before the election, when the other candidates had largely depleted their war chests. He won the nomination with 53 percent of the vote.
In the general election, Obama squared off against another multimillionaire: Jack Ryan, who later dropped out of the race after a judge ordered his divorce files unsealed. The documents revealed that Ryan’s ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, a former Miss Illinois best known for her role as Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, accused him of trying to coerce her to perform sex acts in public
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-02-28/news/obama-and-me
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3602710.ece
McCain is aware of this and is ready
[…] had earlier held off pronouncing that Sibley was suspended in DC (in addition to Florida), because the DC Bar website was not updated, but we now have a copy of the May 8 suspension order, […]
Larry Sinclair’s site is still soliciting for contributions to be paid to Mr. Sibley either via PayPal or via check. The site said that Sibley recently visited Sinclair in jail in DC as his attorney although he is suspended. Is that legal? (Sinclair was arrested after his press conference on 18 june and is awaiting extradition to Delaware for what has been reported as a 2007 charge related to insurance fraud.)
Here is a quote from Larry Sinclair’s blog http://larrysinclair0926.wordpress.com :
“Contributions To Larry’s Atty ********
There are two options for making contributions to Larry’s Attorney: Online Payment or Check By Mail
Online Payments can be made at the following link:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=mbsibley%40civilforfeiture%2eco
Check By Mail:
Please make the check payable to:
Law Offices MB Sibley
and send to:
Center for Forfeiture Law
Montgomery Blair Sibley
1629 K Street, Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20006 ”
I’m not well informed about the law here but the guy sure is not acting like he’s suspended. Though if I were Sinclair I would dump this guy after coming to the press conference in a kilt and bragging about the size of his genitals. Not that sinclair would have had much credibility anyway with the ridiculous anticlimax to his promise that he would be producing corroboration of his wild claims, and his refusal to answer questions about specifics. But Sibley didn’t help matters. The two shysters deserve each other.
[…] denying Overlawyered reader-favorite Montgomery Blair Sibley’s application for a stay of the order automatically suspending him from practice in the District of Columbia. While that stay application was pending, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility […]