Thanks to the Law Bulletin for allowing me to present at this Seminar. My topic was “Leveraging Social Media to Build Your Practice.” The Law Bulletin staff could not have been more helpful or accommodating.
Source: June 16 – Ethics 2015
The case is Farley v. Koepp, 14-1695. The lawyer for the plaintiff had until March 11, 2013 to file a civil rights case. Here is what happened:
On March 8, 2013, the lawyer opened an electronic case file in the Southern District of Illinois. He then emailed a copy of the complaint and the civil cover sheet to the clerk’s office as required by the local rules. The clerk opened the electronic case file. As the court explains “on the next business day – Monday, March 11 – the attorney’s assistant tried to upload the complaint but encountered problems with the electronic payment system. It was not until Tuesday, March 12, that she successfully paid the filing fee and uploaded the complaint.”
The district court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss and dismissed the case as untimely.
The ARDC charged a lawyer handling a divorce, Justin Tedrowe, with wrongfully altering a form, obstructing justice and defrauding an opponent. Tedrowe sucessfully defended himself at trial.
An accusation that a lawyer altered a document could be very difficult to defend. The ARDC would show that the document was altered (after it was signed) and then the lawyer would have a difficult time defending the claim.
This opinion discusses an issue which comes up often – to whom does the estate planner’s duty lie? The typical fact pattern of these cases is as follows. A lawyer represents a parent who has several children. Later the parent dies and the children claim that the will or trust was not consistent with the parent’s intentions.
The first line of defense in these cases was that the lawyer owed no duty to the children. After all he had an attorney-client relationship with the parent, not the children. To accept this defense means that no estate planner could ever be sued for legal malpractice by the beneficiaries. In recent years, courts have steadily rejected the privity argument.
KAYMARK v. Bank of America, NA, Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit 2015 – Google Scholar.
This is a case filed under the fair debt collection practices act. An attorney, acting on behalf of Bank of America, filed a foreclosure lawsuit against Kaymark. Kaymark brought a claim against the attorney and other parties under the FDCPA alleging that the lawyer violated the Act by seeking recovery of legal fees that had not as of yet been incurred.
This is the court’s discussion of the allegation:
The Iowa Supreme Court issued a reprimand to an attorney, Douglas Krull, who was also a part-time magistrate. As a lawyer Krull represented a woman against her ex-husband in her efforts to modify child custody arrangements. As a magistrate, Krull signed a search warrant allowing the police to search the home of his client. Because the custody case was deemed “related” to the criminal case, Krull violated the Code of Judicial Ethics because his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
Its difficult to understand how the attorney could have failed to recognize the problem that signing a warrant to allow the police to search his client’s home would case. At the very least, he could count on an angry call from the client (or soon to be former client).
It’s unethical for prosecutors to lend out letterhead to debt collectors, ABA opinion says.
The ABA has issued an ethics opinion (No. 469) which provides that prosecutors should not lend their stationery to debt collectors. Some prosecutors were lending their letterhead to debt collectors who were then using the letterhead to collect money from debtors. The obvious problem is that the use of this letterhead is designed to threaten people who cannot pay their bills with prosecution.
My reaction to this opinion is one of disbelief. Has our profession really sunk so low that we are letting debt collectors use official letterhead to collect money? Did it not occur to these prosecutors that it was a bad idea to use the imprimatur of their office to collect private debts? Are we not professionals who hold ourselves out to the public as the protectors of civil liberty and rule of law? Who were the people who thought this was a good idea?
Matter of Davis 2014 NY Slip Op 07080.
A bankruptcy lawyer was disciplined for allowing a third party to use his electronic login to file bankruptcy petitions. The pertinent part of the opinion states:
“At issue were four involuntary bankruptcy petitions filed between June and December 2011 against debtor Joseph Lipschitz; three of the petitions were filed by purported pro se creditor Manuel Goldsmith and the fourth was filed by Mendel Minko, also a pro se creditor [FN1]. Two of the petitions were filed with the Southern District and the other two were filed with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York. The first petition was withdrawn by the petitioner creditor and the subsequent three were dismissed for failure to [*2]prosecute.[FN2]
If true, this is an ugly awful tale in which a lawyer, Robert M. Stephenson, stole from trusts established by his parents for the benefit of his own children. The key allegations are set forth in the complaint:
“1. In May 2007, Respondent agreed to serve as trustee of the Robert McCreary Stephenson and Martha LaFon Stephenson Annual Exclusion Gifting Trust (“the children’s trust”), which had been created and funded in Florida at that time by Respondent’s parents, Robert McCreary Stephenson and Martha LaFon Stephenson.
IN RE MARRIAGE OF WIXOM AND WIXOM, Wash: Court of Appeals, 3rd Div. 2014 – Google Scholar.
This is an appeal from a divorce case in which a lawyer (Robert Caruso) and his client (Rick Wixom) were held jointly and severally liable for a $55,000 sanction award. The lawyer and client were sanctioned because, in the underlying custody litigation, they made false charges about Rick’s ex-wife Linda.
Here is where the lawyer made an error. He appealed the sanctions against himself and filed an appeal for his client, Rick Wixom. The court explains how the lawyer threw the client under the bus:
Chicago Legal Malpractice Lawyer Blog