Case ID: so2d_589/html/0479-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.\n     WATSON and LEMMON, JJ., COLE, J., LEMMON, Justice,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

In re Patrick H. HARRINGTON.
    No. 91-B-1963.
    Supreme Court of Louisiana.
    Dec. 3, 1991.
    Patrick Hough Harrington, Basile Joseph Uddo, New Orleans, for respondent.
    James Reed Barrow, G. Fred Ours, Elizabeth A. Alston, New Orleans, for LSBA.
   PER CURIAM.

Upon review of the hearing committee and disciplinary board findings and recommendations, and considering the transcript, record, briefs and oral argument, it is the decision of the court that Patrick H. Harrington be suspended from the practice of law in Louisiana for a period of twelve months. This suspension is to run concurrently with the nine-month suspension previously imposed by this court in 89-B-2380, and is considered to have begun running on March 12, 1991, the date the nine-month suspension was imposed. All costs of this proceeding are assessed to respondent.

WATSON and LEMMON, JJ.,

concur.

The Hearing Committee erred in excluding the transcript of the hearing before the Committee on Professional Responsibility, but the transcript is now in the record and has been considered by this court.

LEMMON, J., concurs and assigns additional reasons.

COLE, J.,

dissents. An appropriate sanction for the violations at issue is a suspension of eighteen months, not the three months herein imposed.

HALL, J., recused.

LEMMON, Justice,

concurring and assigning additional reasons.

The only serious misconduct in the present case occurred during the same time frame as the misconduct in the first case. If the two cases had been considered at the same time, the appropriate overall sanction, when all mitigating circumstances are considered, would not have exceeded twelve months. Accordingly, the majority properly ordered the sanctions to run concurrently, rather than consecutively as recommended by the Hearing Committee. 
      
       Judge Patrick M. Schott, Chief Judge, Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit, participated in the decision in place of Justice Pike Hall, Jr., who was recused.