Case Title: In re Application of Baudendistel

Citation: 2014-Ohio-5200

Docket Number: 2014-0424

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2014-11-26T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as In 
re Application of Baudendistel, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-5200.] 
 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in 
an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested 
to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 
65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or 
other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be 
made before the opinion is published. 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2014-OHIO-5200 
IN RE APPLICATION OF BAUDENDISTEL. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as In re Application of Baudendistel,  
Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-5200.] 
Attorneys—Character and fitness—Lack of candor during admissions process—
Pending application to take the bar exam disapproved—Applicant may 
apply to take the July 2015 or later bar exam. 
(No. 2014-0424—Submitted May 28, 2014—Decided November 26, 2014.) 
ON REPORT by the Board of Commissioners on Character and 
Fitness of the Supreme Court, No. 562. 
___________________________ 
 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Thomas Donald Baudendistel of Cincinnati, Ohio, has applied to 
register as a candidate for admission to the practice of law in Ohio.  In his 
application, he reported a March 2010 Kenton County District Court, Kentucky, 
conviction for reckless operation, which had been reduced from a charge of 
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driving under the influence of alcohol (“DUI”), and a September 2010 Franklin 
County Municipal Court conviction for possession of an open container of beer. 
{¶ 2} A two-person panel of the Cincinnati Bar Association admissions 
committee interviewed Baudendistel on June 5, 2012, and issued a provisional 
report indicating that he possessed the requisite character, fitness, and moral 
qualifications for admissions to the practice of law, making no mention of his  
convictions.  Therefore, the admissions committee provisionally approved his 
registration application.  And after Baudendistel applied to take the July 2013 bar 
exam, the admissions committee recommended final approval of his application 
on May 16, 2013.  It therefore appeared that he would sit for the July 2013 bar 
exam. 
{¶ 3} But on June 19th, Baudendistel sent an e-mail update of his 
application to the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness to report that 
he had been charged with failure to control a motor vehicle and leaving the scene 
of an accident after crashing his vehicle into a parked car at 3:30 a.m. on June 6th. 
{¶ 4} Baudendistel was not permitted to take the July 2013 bar 
examination, and on August 14, the board, sua sponte, commenced an 
investigation pursuant to Gov.Bar R. I(10)(B)(2)(e).  Having completed that 
investigation and expressed concerns about Baudendistel’s truthfulness, the board 
now recommends that we disapprove his pending application but permit him to 
apply for the February 2015 bar examination.  We adopt the board’s 
recommendation that Baudendistel be permitted to reapply, but rather than 
permitting him to apply for the February 2015 bar exam, we will permit him to 
apply for the July 2015 bar exam. 
Criminal Charges Linked to Alcohol 
{¶ 5} At the hearing on this matter, Baudendistel testified about the three 
instances that led to his being charged with criminal conduct. 
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{¶ 6} The first incident was an automobile accident in December 2009.  
Baudendistel testified that he had been driving to pick up a friend who could not 
drive because he had been drinking.  He crashed into another vehicle, causing 
property damage to both vehicles, but no injuries, and was charged with DUI.  
Baudendistel eventually entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of reckless 
operation, was ordered to pay a modest fine of $274, and his parents did not 
permit him to drive for six months.  He admitted that he probably should have 
been convicted of the DUI offense and acknowledged that he was fortunate that 
he did not hurt anyone or receive a harsher punishment.  Baudendistel candidly 
admitted that he had previously driven after drinking alcohol, but claimed that this 
incident was the last time that he had driven while impaired. 
{¶ 7} Baudendistel’s second offense was a citation for having an open 
container of beer on the sidewalk in front of his brother’s residence in August or 
September 2010.  He testified that he had rented a bus to drive himself, his 
brother, and their friends to their destination for his brother’s bachelor party but 
that as the group got off the bus and walked on the sidewalk, they were stopped 
and cited by an undercover police officer for their open containers.  He described 
the episode as a combination of bad luck and bad decision-making. 
{¶ 8} The third and final event occurred in June 2013, just weeks before 
Baudendistel was scheduled to take the July 2013 bar examination.  He testified 
that he and several friends from law school met for dinner at the home of a friend 
of a friend to celebrate their graduation.  From 6:30 p.m. until about 9:00 p.m., 
five of them drank a 12-pack of beer.  He admitted that he had drunk two or three 
beers and explained that he had not been getting much sleep at the time, as he was 
working two jobs and studying for the bar exam.  Consequently, he fell asleep at 
the house sometime around midnight. 
{¶ 9} Baudendistel testified that he awoke sometime between 3:00 a.m. 
and 3:15 a.m. and left in the pouring rain to drive approximately one-half mile to 
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his home.  He swerved to avoid an oncoming car and struck another vehicle 
parked on the street.  He stopped about 100 feet down the road to make sure that 
he had not hit a person or caused serious damage.  He stated that he had turned at 
the next intersection with the intent to return and inspect the damage to the other 
car, but discovered that his car was too damaged to drive any further. 
{¶ 10} In hindsight, Baudendistel acknowledged that he should have 
called the police or at least called someone to bring him a pen and paper so that he 
could leave a note on the damaged vehicle, but he could not explain why neither 
of those things occurred to him at the time of the accident.  In response to 
questioning from the panel, however, he acknowledged that he had thought about 
calling the police, but said, “I knew if I left a note, I wouldn’t have [to report] it to 
the police.  And, again, ironically and stupidly I didn’t want to present any issues 
with the Board of Character and Fitness so I was going to take care of it through 
the insurance with that owner of the car.” 
{¶ 11} With his car immobilized and without the means to leave a written 
message, Baudendistel walked about a quarter of a mile home with, he testified, 
the intention of writing a note and returning to the crash site to leave it on the 
damaged vehicle.  When he arrived at home, he plugged in his telephone, dried 
off, sat down to compose a note, and promptly fell asleep.  He answered 
affirmatively when asked if he had sat down at his desk, but later testified that he 
had not been at his desk but in a moon-shaped chair in his room. 
{¶ 12} Baudendistel testified that he awoke hours later in a panic and 
called his friend, who practices law in Kentucky, at approximately 8:00 or 8:30 
a.m. to ask him what to do.  On his friend’s advice, he called the police to report 
the crash around 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. and learned that someone else had reported it 
earlier that morning.  Baudendistel explained what had happened, provided his 
insurance information to the police, and offered to take a blood test.  Despite his 
calling the police several times over the next few days, they did not follow up 
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5 
 
with him until June 11th, when they asked him to come in and provide a 
statement.  Baudendistel immediately went to the police department.  After he 
gave his statement, the officer served him with citations for failure to control his 
vehicle and leaving the scene of an accident. 
{¶ 13} On the advice of his counsel, Baudendistel entered a plea of not 
guilty, but at his character-and-fitness hearing, he admitted that he had committed 
the charged offenses.  He testified that the charges had been dismissed because 
the prosecuting witness did not appear for a pretrial hearing. 
{¶ 14} Because each of Baudendistel’s run-ins with the law appears to 
have involved the use of alcohol, the hearing panel inquired about his history of 
alcohol use.  He testified that he drank alcohol once during his sophomore year in 
high school but did not drink again until his senior year.  In college, he drank once 
a week—usually on the weekend.  Although he admitted that he occasionally 
drank to excess in college, he claimed that due to his workload in law school, he 
drank only once or twice a month, and to excess once every four months.  At his 
hearing, he reported that he no longer drank to get drunk but occasionally has a 
beer or two.  He noted that drinking was no longer the “feature of the event,” as it 
had been in college, but was more incidental to other events in his life. 
{¶ 15} Approximately one month after his panel hearing, Baudendistel 
submitted to a chemical-dependency and mental-health assessment performed by 
Stephanie Krznarich, a licensed chemical-dependency counselor and the clinical 
director of Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program, Inc. (“OLAP”).  In a letter to the 
panel chairperson and the Office of Bar Admissions, Krznarich stated that 
Baudendistel had abused alcohol in the past, but that he appeared to understand 
the dynamics of his binge drinking and to have developed a more mature pattern 
of alcohol use.  She found no chemical-dependency issues that would require him 
to enter into an OLAP contract at that time. 
 
 
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Disposition 
{¶ 16} An applicant to the Ohio bar must prove by clear and convincing 
evidence that he or she “possesses the requisite character, fitness, and moral 
qualifications for admission to the practice of law.”  Gov.Bar R. I(11)(D)(1).  The 
applicant’s record must justify “the trust of clients, adversaries, courts, and others 
with respect to the professional duties owed to them.”  Gov.Bar R. I(11)(D)(3).  
“A record manifesting a significant deficiency in the honesty, trustworthiness, 
diligence, or reliability of an applicant may constitute a basis for disapproval of 
the applicant.”  Id. 
{¶ 17} In determining that Baudendistel had not proved that he possesses 
the requisite character, fitness, and moral qualifications, the board considered the 
factors set forth in Gov.Bar R. I(11)(D)(3) and (4). 
{¶ 18} The board noted that Baudendistel had apparently abused alcohol 
in the year and a half preceding his hearing before the board, but based on 
Krznarich’s report, it believed that he was no longer abusing and was not 
dependent on alcohol. 
{¶ 19} The larger issue, according to the board, is Baudendistel’s lack of 
candor during the admissions process.  The board found that his testimony 
regarding the June 2013 incident was “disjointed and frankly in many respects not 
entirely believable, as he himself acknowledged.”  The board was troubled by his 
conduct after the crash, which it interpreted as an attempt to conceal the fact that 
he had been drinking, and his efforts during his testimony to downplay the role of 
alcohol in the incident. 
{¶ 20} The board’s greatest concern, however, was the inconsistencies 
between Baudendistel’s testimony and his June 19, 2013 e-mail reporting the hit-
and-run incident to the board.  While his testimony emphasized the fact that he 
had fallen asleep at the home of an acquaintance after drinking at a party with his 
friends, his earlier e-mail made no mention of that fact.  Instead, his e-mail states 
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that following the accident, his “head began to throb in excruciating pain” so he 
walked home “intending to get medically checked out and to return to place a note 
on the car,” but when he got home, his headache substantially subsided without 
medical attention, and he accidentally fell asleep.  Baudendistel did not mention 
his excruciating pain or the fact that he had contemplated seeking medical 
attention in his testimony—until the panel members inquired about it near the end 
of the hearing.  These omissions, combined with Baudendistel’s admission that he 
was immediately concerned about how his June 2013 auto accident would affect 
the bar-admissions process, reinforced the board’s belief that Baudendistel was 
not wholly candid and forthright about the incident.  Based on this belief and the 
paramount importance of honesty and integrity in the legal profession and their 
primacy in assessing the character and fitness of an applicant for admission to the 
bar, the board found that Baudendistel had failed to carry his burden of proving 
that he currently possesses the requisite character, fitness, and moral 
qualifications for admission to the bar.  Therefore, the board recommends that his 
current application be disapproved but that he be permitted to apply for the 
February 2015 bar examination. 
{¶ 21} Because we agree that Baudendistel failed to provide complete and 
accurate information about his June 2013 auto accident, offering differing 
explanations for his conduct during the admissions process, and initially omitting 
the important detail that he had been drinking alcohol several hours before the 
crash, we agree that he has failed to prove that he currently possesses the requisite 
character, fitness, and moral qualifications for admission to the practice of law in 
Ohio.  See Gov.Bar R. I(11)(3)(g) (requiring an assessment of an applicant’s 
character, fitness, and moral qualifications to include consideration of the 
applicant’s failure to provide complete and accurate information concerning the 
applicant’s past) and (h) (requiring the consideration of the applicant’s false 
statements, including omissions). 
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{¶ 22} Accordingly, Baudendistel’s pending application to take the bar 
exam is disapproved.  He may apply to take the July 2015 or a later bar exam, 
provided that he submits a new application to register as a candidate for 
admission to the practice of law in accordance with Gov.Bar R. I(3) and is able to 
establish that he has the requisite character, fitness, and other qualifications. 
Judgment accordingly. 
PFEIFER, O’DONNELL, LANZINGER, KENNEDY, FRENCH, and O’NEILL, JJ., 
concur. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., dissents and would allow the applicant to reapply for the 
July 2016 or a later bar exam. 
_______________________________ 
Keating, Muething & Klekamp, P.L.L., Richard L. Creighton Jr., and 
James M. Jansing, for applicant. 
Rendigs, Fry, Kiely, Dennis, L.L.P., and Jonathan Phelps Saxton, for 
Cincinnati Bar Association. 
_________________________