Case Title: Disciplinary Counsel v. Suarez

Citation: 1998-Ohio-305

Docket Number: 19980825

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 1998-11-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
OFFICE OF DISCIPLINARY COUNSEL v. SUAREZ. 
[Cite as Disciplinary Counsel v. Suarez (1998), 84 Ohio St.3d 4.] 
Attorneys at law — Misconduct — Public reprimand — Writing two checks from a 
client trust account to cover a deficit in former law firm’s operating 
account. 
(No. 98-825 — Submitted August 19, 1998 — Decided November 10, 1998.) 
ON CERTIFIED REPORT by the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and 
Discipline of the Supreme Court, No. 96-90. 
 
In a complaint filed October 15, 1996, relator, Office of Disciplinary 
Counsel, charged respondent, Isabel Suarez of Dayton, Ohio, Attorney 
Registration No. 0015899, with professional misconduct, including a violation of 
DR 9-102(A) (failing to preserve identity of client’s funds).  After hearings on 
June 6 and August 14, 1997, a panel of the Board of Commissioners on 
Grievances and Discipline of the Supreme Court (“board”) found that Suarez had 
violated DR 9-102(A) by writing two checks from a client trust account to cover a 
deficit in her former law firm’s operating account.  The panel recommended that 
Suarez receive only a public reprimand, after considering the mitigating 
circumstances surrounding her misconduct, her acknowledged integrity within the 
practice of law, her lack of any prior professional sanction, and her dedication to 
the Hispanic community.  The board adopted the panel’s findings of fact, 
conclusions of law, and recommendation. 
__________________ 
 
Jonathan E. Coughlan, Disciplinary Counsel, and Lori J. Brown, Assistant 
Disciplinary Counsel, for relator. 
 
David C. Greer, for respondent. 
__________________ 
 
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Per Curiam.  In November 1994, Suarez joined the law firm of Bruce A. 
Buren & Associates to serve as a managing/marketing associate with signatory 
authority on the firm’s bank accounts.  As part of her employment agreement, 
Suarez assigned her interest in twelve migrant workers’ personal injury cases that 
were eventually settled and that brought substantial sums under the Buren firm’s 
control.  The firm retained thirty-three and one-third percent of these settlements 
as legal fees, deposited in the firm’s client trust account funds sufficient to cover 
the plaintiffs’ medical expenses, and paid to each client the remainder of his or her 
proportionate settlement share.  But rather than draft checks, on the firm’s behalf, 
to the providers of the clients’ medical care, Suarez transferred approximately 
$16,000 to the Buren firm’s operating account to cover expenses, knowingly 
causing the trust account to fall below the clients’ medical costs. 
 
The board found that Suarez had commingled funds in violation of DR 9-
102(A), but also that extentuating circumstances mitigated against imposition of 
an actual suspension period.  We agree. 
 
As the board recognized, Suarez committed her misconduct during a 
particularly difficult time in her life — she had recently been hospitalized for 
psychiatric problems, she was newly divorced and embroiled in a losing custody 
battle, and she had become entangled in a romantic relationship with her 
employer, Bruce A. Buren.  Buren had persuaded Suarez to leave her job as the 
manager of legal services for the Montgomery County Children Services Board 
and to join his fledgling law firm, promising her a lucrative international law 
practice.  The firm soon experienced severe financial problems, and Buren ordered 
Suarez to transfer certain trust account funds to the firm’s operating account.  She 
reluctantly complied based on Buren’s assurance that the money would be used to 
pay the clients’ medical expenses.  Suarez wrote a trust account check to the 
 
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operating account in February 1995 and another in March 1995, but despite her 
repeated pleas and protestations that the transfers were improper, Buren never 
approved payment to the clients’ medical providers. 
 
Suarez had become increasingly aware of the firm’s dire financial state by 
the time she and Buren ended their relationship in March or April 1995, but she 
was desperate to remain employed to improve her chances for winning custody of 
her child.  She confessed that she wrote the checks transferring the trust account 
funds with the understanding that the funds might be used improperly for 
operating costs.  So in an attempt to mitigate the infraction, Suarez ignored 
Buren’s instruction to identify the funding source as some bogus client and instead 
truthfully disclosed on at least the February check stub that the deposit was to 
cover an operating account deficiency.  Suarez has since frankly accepted 
responsibility for her part in the commingling scheme, which we attribute to her 
naivety and vulnerability.  Suarez ultimately quit the firm in April 1995 amid her 
suspicions that Buren was not ever going to authorize payment of the clients’ 
medical expenses, that he had opened a credit card account for her without her 
knowledge, and that he had embarked on a check-kiting campaign, all to sustain 
the firm no matter what the cost. 
 
Suarez is a Cuban immigrant, fluent in Spanish, who came to this country at 
the age of twelve after experiencing certain traumatic episodes during the Bay of 
Pigs conflict and Cuban Missile Crisis.  In fact, her hospitalization in the summer 
of 1994 was in part the result of post-traumatic stress syndrome and in part due to 
deep depression.  Suarez graduated from law school in 1981 and, after serving in 
various capacities that capitalized on her marketing or bilingual skills, she began 
practicing privately in 1991, primarily in juvenile law. 
 
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Judge Walter Rice of the United States District Court for the Southern 
District of Ohio and Judge Michael B. Murphy of the Montgomery County 
Juvenile Court attested to Suarez’s valued services in their courtrooms.  Judge 
Rice related his esteem for Suarez’s effective interpreting skills.  He also 
acknowledged that she was one of very few practitioners able to serve the 
Hispanic community in the Dayton area.  Judge Murphy testified that Suarez had 
been appointed a part-time referee on his court and that he had high regard for her 
compassionate and thorough work with the people with whom she came in 
contact.  Other witnesses also acclaimed Suarez’s competence and integrity in 
representing underserved segments of the Dayton community. 
 
We, like the board before us, find that the circumstances in which Suarez 
violated DR 9-102(A), especially that of acting under pressure from her employer 
during a period of overwhelming personal misfortune, dispel any need to impose 
an actual suspension.  For these reasons, we adopt the board’s findings of fact, 
conclusions of law, and recommendation.  Accordingly, Isabel Suarez is hereby 
publicly reprimanded for having violated DR 9-102(A).  Costs taxed to 
respondent. 
Judgment accordingly. 
 
DOUGLAS, RESNICK, F.E. SWEENEY and PFEIFER, JJ., concur. 
 
MOYER, C.J., COOK and LUNDBERG STRATTON, JJ., dissent. 
__________________ 
 
COOK, J., dissenting.  I cannot agree with the majority that the mitigation 
evidence in this case suffices to preclude actual suspension. 
 
Her interpreting skills aside, respondent used clients’ funds to forestall the 
collapse of the firm where she was employed.  This case of commingling is 
indistinguishable from others where the lawyer acts out of personal financial 
 
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adversity.  Here, respondent benefited from the infraction as evidenced by her 
testimony that her custody battle could have been adversely affected by a closing 
of the firm. The benefit to respondent belies the view that respondent’s sanction 
should be lessened because she was just an unwilling participant in the offending 
conduct.  The imposition of the sanction of a six-month suspension will preserve 
the principle that commingling of clients’ funds by an attorney is a grievous 
breach of that lawyer’s oath. 
 
MOYER, C.J., and LUNDBERG STRATTON, J., concur in the foregoing 
dissenting opinion.