Adam Liptak’s latest Sidebar column reviews the case of an asbestos plaintiffs’ lawyers’ doctor who should know better, as he testified in the Judge Jack silicosis proceedings. I have uploaded the motion to exclude Dr. Segarra’s testimony.
Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
Lynne Stewart at Hofstra
I’m discussing the controversy over at Point of Law here and here.
P.S. And more on the topic, posted Thursday afternoon.
“It’s Official: Lawyers Are Incapable Of Understanding Civility”
Dan McLaughlin on Geoffrey Fieger’s disciplinary win (Baseball Crank, Sept. 25).
Also, Links We’re Sorry We Clicked: Geoffrey Fieger art (via AJP).
Seattle schools pro bono, cont’d
It’s sparking further discussion:
Hey, Davis Wright Tremaine, and your clients, the parents who sued the district: This is insane.
You argue this isn’t to enrich the firm, but to punish the district. The theory is that the fees, at $1.8 million and rising, are a lash to whip the district for its bad race-based deeds.
When I called the lawyers Tuesday, they compared it to, among other cases, their pro bono defense of a prisoner beaten by L.A. jail guards.
This makes no sense. Seattle’s policy wasn’t intended to hurt anyone, let alone beat them to a pulp.
(Danny Westneat, “The bill just keeps going up”, Seattle Times, Sept. 19; Emily Heffter, “Billing in ‘pro bono’ cases is fodder for ethics debate”, Seattle Times, Sept. 18; Above the Law, Sept. 18).
Texas: “Public left in dark on accused attorneys”
How pathetic is the State Bar of Texas when it comes to protecting clients from rogue lawyers? This pathetic:
Dallas attorney Bruce Patton has a clean disciplinary record, according to the State Bar’s Web site, which provides profiles of the state’s 80,000 or more practicing attorneys. But consider this before you hire him to draft your will: Patton is in state prison after being convicted of a felony two years ago….
The Texas Legislature and Supreme Court, which share a role in establishing ethics rules for attorneys, have made it so that the public stays in the dark about thousands of lawyers accused of misconduct. Bar confidentiality rules ensure that many sanctions are private and that lawyers accused of felonies can continue practicing. The Bar doesn’t require attorneys to report their criminal record or malpractice suits.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s disturbing investigation goes into considerable detail, and mentions a couple of cases that will be familiar to readers of this site: “San Antonio attorney Ted Roberts, charged with stealing $100,000 from his wife’s lovers, was recently convicted, two years after being indicted. He faces a five-year sentence. The Bar didn’t suspend him until June and is now recommending disbarment.” And: “The firm of John O’Quinn, one of the state’s wealthiest personal-injury lawyers, was ordered by an arbitration panel this summer to pay $35 million to former clients who say he overbilled them for expenses, but no mention of that order is on the Bar’s Web site.” (Yamil Berard, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Aug. 19; “Panel seeks changes in Bar’s disciplinary system for lawyers”, Aug. 19). More: GruntDoc wonders whether doctors can expect a similar concern for confidentiality.
Lerach’s guilty plea
Following up on Walter’s Sep. 18 roundup, Lerach should be proud of his lawyers: his plea deal is for a single count of mispaying Steven Cooperman, drops all of the Torkelsen-related charges, will likely get him out of prison in under two years, requires the government to forgo prosecution of his current law partners, and doesn’t require him to cooperate with the prosecution of Melvyn Weiss. He may well be disbarred afterwards, but he’ll also be a multimillionaire in his late sixties who can retire comfortably even after paying an $8 million fine, and nothing stops plaintiffs’ firms from offering small fortunes to Lerach to act as a “non-legal consultant.” [plea agreement; WSJ; The Recorder; NY Times]
Relatedly, Wired reprints its 1996 “Bloodsucking Scumbag” article.
Update: Great moments in lawyer discipline
Reader Eric Bainter writes:
The shenanigans of the NC prosecutor Mike Nifong got me to thinking about misbehaving attorneys in general; me being from the San Antonio area, this led me to wonder “whatever happened to those attorneys in the fraudulent suit against Chrysler?” (covered on Overlawyered May 23 and Jun. 26, 2000; Mar. 17 and Jul. 10, 2003; Aug. 1, 2006). During a fit of insomnia I decided to find out.
I started by checking the coverage on your site which most recently had noted, in the post from August of last year, that the Texas bar had still not yet gotten around to dealing with Andrew Toscano, one of the lawyers implicated in the affair. I searched the Texas Bar website, and found this was not quite true – Toscano got his discipline, such as it is, the day before your entry. I have copied and pasted beneath (after the jump) the entries for all three lawyers. Robert Kugle, the central figure in the fraud, got disbarred in 2003. The other two, Toscano and Robert L. Wilson III, only relatively recently got their punishments – two year suspensions – and if I understand the term “fully probated” correctly, their “suspensions” are “suspended” and they can still practice law. Each was fined $2500 in attorney’s fees and court costs – I assume this goes to the Texas Bar. No mention of the $1 million in sanctions from Judge Peeples.
I also found this article from Law.com that sheds some light on the “suspensions”.
I searched on the Internet for the current whereabouts of Toscano and Wilson. Andrew E. Toscano apparently now practices with a firm called “Gene Toscano, Inc.” I don’t know whether that is a relative of his, or Andrew’s middle name happens to be “Eugene” and he has decided to practice under that. No website for that firm that I can find.
Robert L. “Trey” Wilson III apparently practiced environmental law for a while after leaving Kugle’s firm (or maybe Kugle’s firm left him?) — the San Antonio bar featured him in its newsletter last December. I also found a now-defunct profile/bio page within the website of the attorney Louis Rosenberg, who does environmental law in San Antonio, but I do not notice any current mention of Wilson’s name on Rosenberg’s home page — he is not in Attorney Profiles, for example. If “Trey” worked there, I suspect he no longer does.
My temporary bout of insomnia seems over now. Best wishes,
Eric Bainter
[details of Texas bar discipline follow after the jump]
O’Quinn told to pay clients $41 million
Because of interest and attorneys’ fees, the figure ordered by an arbitration panel is up from the $35 million reported in our earlier coverage (Apr. 15, Jun. 9, Jul. 19, Jul. 20, Jul. 25). The panel agreed that O’Quinn had overcharged former breast implant clients. (Debra Cassens Weiss, “Lawyer O’Quinn Ordered to Pay $41.4 M”, ABA Journal Online, Sept. 12).
Overlawyered has been covering this particular scandal for more than eight years (Aug. 4, 1999), sometimes out in front of the conventional press.
Bills client $5,700 for brief copied off Internet
Ah, but knowing which material to plagiarize — that’s the skill the client is really paying for, right? But an Iowa court wasn’t pleased with West Des Moines lawyer Peter Cannon’s conduct, and ordered him to surrender fees and take an ethics course. (TaxProf, Sept. 10).
“Inappropriate and unethical behavior”
Litigious populist Larry Klayman, once a legal scourge of the Clinton White House and a repeat mentionee on this site (May 7 and links from there), has once again drawn rebuke from the bench. This time Judge Walter Tolub has denied Klayman the right to appear in his Manhattan courtroom, saying Klayman’s “record demonstrates more than an occasional lapse of judgment, it evinces a total disregard for the judicial process”:
The judge cited seven instances in which Klayman had been rebuked or sanctioned by federal judges. One of those was Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin, who in 1997 sanctioned Klayman for making “preposterous” claims and engaging in “abusive and obnoxious” behavior.
Klayman, who vows to appeal the ruling, is seeking the right to represent former New York Post gossip reporter Jared Paul Stern in a lawsuit against billionaire Ronald Burkle. (Anthony Lin, “Klayman Denied N.Y. Admission in Former Gossip Reporter’s Suit Against Billionaire”, New York Law Journal, Sept. 7).