This is the kind of below-the-belt tactic that makes the lawyer a believable villain in works of fiction. Because when someone is seeking a protective order and you threaten making their nude photos public unless they drop the matter against your client, well, that’s just gross. And as the Indiana Supreme Court notes, it is attorney misconduct. Specifically it’s: knowingly making a false statement of material fact or law to a third person in the course of representing a client; engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation; and engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.
Anyway, the Indiana Supreme Court found Allen R. Stout “confronted the petitioner with several “8×10 color copies of intimate photos she had sent the man during their relationship, prior to the events giving rise to the protective order petition, displaying them facing up on the table for all in attendance to see.” He then queried, “why do women who seek the aid of the court send these kinds of pictures to men?”
Rather than just leave it as innuendo, he went explicit with his threat.
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[Stout] then asked her if she still intended to pursue a protective order or whether there would be a “better way” to handle things than for her to be “drug through” and “exposed in” the court. When the petitioner responded she just wanted the man to stop harassing her, [Stout] ended the deposition and told the petitioner “[t]he court reporter will transcribe this to final form, submit it to the court, it then becomes a public record. There’s a way to stop that, but otherwise with the matter still pending we’ll have to submit it to the court and attend a hearing, which will be a very public hearing as well.” The petitioner then indicated she wanted to dismiss the case, [Stout] instructed the court reporter to go off the record, and [Stout] instructed the petitioner how to file for dismissal, which she did immediately after leaving the deposition.
Stout was apparently so proud over the dirty tactic that he “bragged” he secured a dismissal because he threatened to have the nude photos become part of the record.
And for this disturbing lawyering — the Indiana Supreme Court called it an “intentional and purposeful plan” “to coerce and bully the petitioner” — he’ll be suspended for 90 days.
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).