Attorney Misconduct

Another Lawyer Bites The Dust – Gets Caught With a Prostitute

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This has not been a great day for lawyers in Indiana. Another Hoosier lawyer, this time at Barnes & Thornburg, just received a public reprimand for patronizing a prostitute (we’re only doing our part to aid in the shaming).

From the National Law Journal (via the ABA Journal):

The Indiana Supreme Court has publicly reprimanded a Barnes & Thornburg attorney for patronizing a prostitute in February.

Hiroaki Nishikawara, of counsel in the law firm’s Indianapolis office, received the reprimand after the court approved an agreement between him and the state’s attorney disciplinary commission. Nishikawara entered into a plea agreement for committing a class A misdemeanor. The agreement required him to perform six hours of community service and attend an impact panel proceeding. The court noted that he had completed the requirements and had no prior criminal history.

Nishikawara declined to comment about the reprimand.

OK, lawyers I get it. You work ridiculously long hours and it’s really hard to meet women at 3 a.m. when you’re ambling out of work. You’ve tried your sweet charm on your secretary and failed.

But the one thing working 89 hours a day has provided you with is money. So hey, at least you can use that.

Right?

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It’s About Time: Disciplinary Action Sought Against Andrew Shirvell

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We’ve been keeping an eye on Andrew Shirvell, the Michigan attorney who has been conducting a personal crusade against Chris Armstrong, the University of Michigan student body president who happens to be gay. At the beginning of this month, we learned that Shirvell was taking a leave of absence from his day job in the Michigan Attorney General’s office. We also know that Armstrong has sought a restraining order against Shirvell.

Today, we’ve received word that Armstrong is requesting that Shirvell be brought before the bar on ethics charges. Finally. There’s got to be some kind of ethical rule that prohibits lawyers from gay bashing college kids, right?

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Joe Miller: Now an Admitted Liar

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When we included Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller in our gallery of most disgraceful Yale Law School graduates, we admitted that his scandals were trivial in comparison to some other people on the list.

But now maybe Miller will be a worthy contender. Newly released documents contain an email where Miller admits to lying about some of his actions while working as a borough attorney in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I have no idea how the Tea Party will spin this into a positive, but for Democrats and regular Republicans, their problem with Miller won’t be the offense, it’ll be with the cover-up. ‘Twas always thus…

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Taj Oladiran’s ‘Motion of the Year’ Earns Him Sanctions

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tajudeen-oladiran.jpgArizona attorney Tajudeen “Taj” Oladiran came onto our radar back in 2009, when he filed one of the craziest motions we’ve ever seen. Solo practitioner Oladiran, a former associate at Greenberg Traurig, filed a racketeering lawsuit against “Suntrust Bank and its pimps” for allegedly suckering him into predatory housing loans.

The motion that caught our eye — “Motion for a [sic] Honest and Honorable Court System” –  was filed to vent Oladiran’s frustration with the “dishonorable” Susan Bolton, whom Taj called “a brainless coward.” That would be the same Susan Bolton who, in a not-so-cowardly move, blocked part of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

Taj ended the motion:

Finally, to Susan Bolton, we shall meet again you know where. :-)

Not only did Taj get our Motion of the Day nod with that, he earned Motion of the Year honors.

The Arizona court system was less impressed with the motion, though. There, it earned Taj a threat of disbarment…

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Texas Tries to C**kblock Lawyers from Getting Their Freak on With Clients

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Stud lawyers in Texas could have a more difficult time mating with their own clients.

Today many people made time to talk about Texas legal ethics — specifically, a proposal in front of the Texas bar that would prohibit lawyers from having sex with their clients. It’s a rule most jurisdictions have in one form or another. It’s not obvious that getting this rule enacted in Texas would be a huge problem.

But to paraphrase Louis Gossett Jr., “only two things come from Texas, steers and [a horribly anachronistic term that rhymes with 'steers'].”

Let’s deal with the steers first. It seems that the people against the new Texas Bar proposal are afraid that clients might just make up tales of affairs, and Texas lawyers — you know, people specially trained in methods of recognizing and producing evidence — will have no way to defend themselves…

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Retired Brooklyn Judge Blasts NYAG Candidate Via Email

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The Democratic primary for the new New York Attorney General is on Tuesday. Earlier this week, I broke down the candidates and liveblogged the debate between the five Democratics that want to follow in the footsteps of Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with the frontrunner, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice. But I’ve got nothing on retired Brooklyn criminal judge, Amy Herz Juviler. Judge Juviler is definitely not going to vote for Rice. And she doesn’t want her friends to vote for her either. Freed from the bench, she’s been emailing her friends encouraging them to avoid Rice like the plague.

In the email, Judge Juviler gets right to the point:

Friends —
In considering who to vote for in the Democratic Primary, eliminate from your consideration Kathleen Rice.

Bang! Politico has the full email, let’s take a look…

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Lawyer Tells Client She Can Talk to Dead Spouse — But That’s Not What Got Her in Trouble

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Please note: people get Academy Awards for acting like they can talk to dead people.

Full disclosure: I belong to the South Park school of thought, which says that claiming you can speak to dead people makes you a candidate for Biggest Douche in the Universe. Even my priest, who believes that the will of an omniscient and all-powerful being can be easily flummoxed by a thin film of latex, doesn’t believe that he has a direct line of communication with the dead.

One would think that telling a client you are “channeling” his dead wife would violate multiple rules of legal ethics. But not so in Arizona. Nope, in Arizona you can get away with this, reports the ABA Journal:

[Lawyer Charna Johnson] began representing the client during his divorce proceedings in 1999. The client’s wife committed suicide the following year, and Johnson later co-represented him in probate proceedings.

Johnson and the client both testified that they genuinely believed the client’s wife was within Johnson. Two witnesses agreed. The client felt his wife had come back to heal some of the damage from her prescription drug use.

Yeah, that’s perfectly cool in ‘Zona. Remember, this is the state where Bryan Cave lawyers conducted an exorcism. Obviously they’re down with the supernatural in Arizona, so long as the spirits are American-born.

But still, having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a client is a no-no. Luckily for Charna Johnson, the client’s dead wife apparently no longer wanted to have sex with the client. Whew. Johnson really dodged a bullet there…

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Lawsuit of the Day: Why is This Guy So Angry with Avvo?

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Ed. note: This post is by “The Gobbler,” one of the two writers under consideration to join Morning Dockette as a Morning Docket writer. As always, we welcome your thoughts in the comments.

Lawyers tend to define their careers by numbers (school rank, class rank, firm rank) – at least when the numbers are to their liking. Unfortunately for Larry Joe Davis, he does not have a good number (a 3.7 out of 10). He is angry about it and, like any good American, expressed his anger in the form of a lawsuit. Larry Joe’s rambling 21-page complaint, which he of course filed pro se, makes him the latest of several plaintiffs to take a shot at Avvo, the Zagat-esque rating website for the legal industry. I haven’t read the other complaints, but I’m still sure his is the worst of the group.

It reads like a Jack Kerouac novel, jumping around and running together, making it harder to follow than a screenplay-style blog post. The two main points seem to be that Avvo has a “routine business practice of publishing false and misleading information regarding attorneys” and that it coerces attorney participation via a “join-us-and-fix-it-or-else strategy” that “approaches actionable blackmail.” In other words, Larry Joe doesn’t like what’s on his profile and can’t figure out how to change it. His Internet ineptitude seems far-fetched at first, but given his statement in the complaint that web searching is a “new field,” maybe he really can’t figure it out.

So what “misleading information” is making Mr. Davis one of the mad ones?

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A Jersey Judge Benchslaps Paul Weiss and Lowenstein Sandler — Hard

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Back in June, we bestowed Lawyer of the Day honors upon two of the nation’s top litigators: Ted Wells and Martin Flumenbaum, the co-chair and former chair, respectively, of the renowned litigation department at Paul Weiss. Given the sterling reputations of the two lawyers and their firm, it was a surprising development.

We recognized Messrs. Wells and Flumenbaum after a New Jersey judge sanctioned Paul Weiss and its co-counsel — Lowenstein Sandler, one of the Garden State’s leading law firms, and Wells’s former home (before he jumped across the Hudson) — for pursuing a “frivolous” and “ridiculous” legal claim on behalf of billionaire Ronald Perelman against his ex-father-in-law, Robert Cohen.

In June, Judge Ellen Koblitz ordered Paul Weiss and Lowenstein Sandler to pay Cohen’s fees and costs for opposing the claim; she scheduled a hearing to determine the amount. The hearing took place last month, and now we know the amount.

It’s nothing to sneeze at, even for firms as well-heeled as Paul Weiss and Lowenstein. And to add insult to (financial) injury, Judge Koblitz got super-snarky in the opinion setting forth her reasoning….

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Will Footsies During a Deposition Lead to Sanctions?

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The alleged foot tapper

A pair of motions are bouncing around email inboxes this week, thanks to the “foot-tapping lawyer.” (This has nothing to do with Larry Craig, so read on without fear.)

It all started in July, when Florida law firm Rasco Klock sent a paralegal to Wilmington for a deposition. The firm is representing a plaintiff suing an insurance company, but one of their lead attorneys, Juan Carlos Antorcha, had to remain in Miami and conduct the deposition by video, with the paralegal handling the exhibits in person.

During the deposition of a witness for the defense, a strange noise caught the attention of the Perceptive Paralegal. After hearing clicking, he peeked beneath the table and saw a defense attorney’s foot tapping the foot of the deponent. He snapped a photo with his smartphone and sent it to Antorcha, who confronted the defense and halted the deposition. Rasco Klock then filed a very angry motion for sanctions, accusing the defense attorney of coaching the witness through foot tapping.

From the motion:

Before accusing a lawyer of acting in an unethical and unprofessional fashion, a fellow lawyer must think long and hard. Was the breach intentional? What were the circumstances? Was there any sense of contrition? Could the offending lawyer believe that his conduct had been appropriate?

The lawyer accused of foot-tapping is Brown Sims shareholder Kenneth Engerrand. On every single page of the 13-page motion for sanctions against him is the incriminating footsie photo…

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