Title: Medina Cty. Bar Assn. v. Lewis

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

[Cite as Medina Cty. Bar Assn. v. Lewis, 121 Ohio St.3d 596, 2009-Ohio-1765.] 
 
 
 
MEDINA COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION v. LEWIS. 
[Cite as Medina Cty. Bar Assn. v. Lewis, 121 Ohio St.3d 596, 2009-Ohio-1765.] 
Attorneys at law — Misconduct — Multiple violations of the Rules of Professional 
Conduct — Forging a judge’s signature — One-year suspension from the 
practice of law. 
(No. 2008-2068 — Submitted January 20, 2009 — Decided April 21, 2009.) 
ON CERTIFIED REPORT by the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and 
Discipline of the Supreme Court, No. 08-015. 
__________________ 
 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Respondent, Kenneth J. Lewis of Hinckley, Ohio, Attorney 
Registration No. 0073002, was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 2000.  In 
April 2008, relator, Medina County Bar Association, filed a complaint against 
respondent alleging that he had forged a judge’s signature on a previously time-
stamped judgment entry. 
{¶ 2} Respondent stipulated to the facts and violations set forth in the 
complaint, namely Prof.Cond.R. 8.4(b) (prohibiting illegal conduct adversely 
reflecting on a lawyer’s honesty or trustworthiness), 8.4(c) (prohibiting conduct 
involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation), 8.4(d) (prohibiting 
conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice), and 8.4(h) (prohibiting 
conduct adversely reflecting on a lawyer’s fitness to practice law).  A panel of the 
Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline heard the matter on 
September 27, 2008, and recommended that respondent’s license to practice law 
be suspended for one year.  The board adopted the panel’s findings of fact and 
conclusions of law but not its recommendation, advocating instead a two-year 
suspension.  Respondent filed objections to the board’s report, urging a six-month 
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suspension with all six months stayed.  The appropriate sanction to be imposed is 
the issue now before us. 
{¶ 3} Respondent was retained by Danielle Burkhard in 2007 to 
represent her before the Berea Municipal Court on traffic charges.  Of vital 
importance to Burkhard was the retention of occupational driving privileges.  
Although the court had a standard form, motions and entries drafted by an 
attorney were usually accepted. 
{¶ 4} Respondent drafted his own motion and judgment entry for driving 
privileges in Burkhard’s case and presented several copies to a court deputy clerk 
on May 21, 2007.  According to respondent, the clerk began to time-stamp the 
documents, but then handed them back and told respondent to use the standard 
forms instead.  Respondent scheduled a hearing for Burkhard and left. 
{¶ 5} On May 25, respondent and Burkhard attended a pretrial.  
According to respondent, after the pretrial, Burkhard asked about the process of 
receiving driving privileges.  He claims that Burkhard asked, “What does the 
driving privileges look like?”  Respondent admits that he answered her by pulling 
out the rejected time-stamped judgment entry from four days earlier and, in 
Burkhard’s presence, signing the judge’s name to it and giving it to her.  
Respondent then let Burkhard leave with the document and did not “even think 
twice about it.” 
{¶ 6} Burkhard later met with her probation officer and discussed 
driving privileges.  Burkhard gave the officer the judgment entry with the judge’s 
forged signature.  The probation officer apparently recognized the signature as a 
forgery and informed the Berea Municipal Court. 
{¶ 7} At the panel hearing, respondent could offer no explanation for his 
actions.  He testified, however, that it was never his intent to make Burkhard 
believe that she had driving privileges at that time.  He attributed his behavior to a 
“serious lapse of judgment” and expressed shame and remorse for it. 
January Term, 2009 
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{¶ 8} In urging a shorter, stayed suspension, respondent emphasized (1) 
his full cooperation with the disciplinary process, (2) his lack of any prior 
disciplinary offenses, (3) the absence of any pattern of misconduct, (4) the 
admission and recognition of the wrongfulness of his acts, (5) the lack of client 
harm, and (6) his good reputation in the community.  See Section 10 of the Rules 
and Regulations Governing Procedure on Complaints and Hearings Before the 
Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline (“BCGD Proc.Reg.”) 
10(B)(2)(a), (b), (d), and (e). 
{¶ 9} Respondent insisted that his actions lacked a selfish or dishonest 
motive.  He produced an affidavit from Raymond J. Wohl, clerk of courts for 
Berea Municipal Court, who stated, “Driving privileges are routinely granted in 
OVI cases, such as Ms. Burkhard’s.”  Respondent argues that the forged 
instrument did not advance Burkhard’s desire for driving privileges.  Respondent 
did not present Burkhard’s testimony to corroborate his own. 
{¶ 10} The panel unanimously found that respondent “was not truthful on 
the witness stand when he testified that the only reason he forged the Judge’s 
signature was because his client wanted to see what a Judgment Entry granting 
occupational driving privileges would look like.  This explanation is simply not 
believable.” 
{¶ 11} The board deferred to the panel’s credibility determination, as do 
we. Respondent’s lack of credibility coupled with the seriousness of the offense 
persuades us that an actual rather than a stayed suspension is warranted, and we 
accept the panel’s recommended sanction.  Respondent, in the presence of his 
client, forged a judge’s signature on a time-stamped judgment entry and then gave 
it to the client.  In doing so, moreover, respondent, in his own words, did not 
“think twice about it.” 
{¶ 12} Respondent is hereby suspended from the practice of law for one 
year.  Costs are taxed to respondent. 
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Judgment accordingly. 
 
MOYER, C.J., and PFEIFER, O’CONNOR, O’DONNELL, and CUPP, JJ., 
concur. 
 
LUNDBERG STRATTON and LANZINGER, JJ., dissent. 
__________________ 
LUNDBERG STRATTON, J., dissenting. 
{¶ 13} The majority suspends Lewis from practicing law for one year 
because of the seriousness of his signing a judge’s name to an entry without 
permission and because the majority did not find credible his explanation for the 
conduct.  Because I find Lewis’s explanation credible, I believe that a lesser 
sanction is warranted. 
{¶ 14} While our usual practice is to defer to a panel on judging 
credibility, “[w]e are the ultimate arbiters in disciplinary proceedings.”  
Cincinnati Bar Assn. v. Powers, 119 Ohio St.3d 473, 2008-Ohio-4785, 895 
N.E.2d 172, ¶ 21.  It is undisputed that Lewis scrawled a signature on the judge’s 
signature line of an entry without the judge’s permission and that doing so was a 
violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct.  However, I believe Lewis’s 
assertion that he never intended to pass off the entry as genuine. 
{¶ 15} Neither Lewis nor the bar association called Lewis’s client as a 
witness at his disciplinary hearing.  Lewis testified as follows:  At a pretrial 
hearing on her traffic charges, Lewis’s client asked him whether she had driving 
privileges; he informed her that she did not have such privileges.  Because his 
client wanted to see what a document granting driving privileges looked like, 
Lewis retrieved the proposed driving entry that had been rejected by the clerk’s 
office, scrawled a signature on it, and said, “This is what a driving privileges 
entry would look like if you had that.”  He then gave her the entry.  While he later 
recognized that signing the document was a “serious lapse of judgment,” Lewis 
maintained that he never intended his client to believe that the entry was valid and 
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5 
provided her temporary driving privileges.  While this explanation, on its face, 
appears questionable, I believe that the evidence supports Lewis’s assertion. 
{¶ 16} Even after signing the entry, Lewis arranged hearings, scheduled 
on several different dates, for the purpose of seeking temporary driving privileges 
for his client.  Ultimately, these hearing dates were canceled at the client’s 
request, and a plea was reached before the issue of temporary driving privileges 
was resolved.  Had Lewis considered the entry valid, there would have been no 
need for these hearings. 
{¶ 17} The signature on the entry bore no resemblance to the judge’s 
actual signature, as evidenced by the fact that Lewis’s client’s probation officer 
brought the entry to the attention of municipal court clerk, who launched an 
investigation that determined the signature not to be genuine.  Even the attorney 
questioning Lewis at the disciplinary hearing stated, “When I look at that entry 
and I see something on it, that appears to be scratching.”  Had Lewis intended the 
entry to seem authentic, he certainly would have taken more care to accurately 
depict the judge’s signature. 
{¶ 18} Moreover, Lewis never attempted to file the entry or pass it off as 
genuine.  It was his client who presented it to her probation officer, despite having 
been told by Lewis that she did not have driving privileges. 
{¶ 19} Finally, because the municipal court involved herein routinely 
grants temporary driving privileges to first-time drunk-driving offenders, Lewis 
had nothing to gain by forging the entry, but had everything to lose. 
{¶ 20} I believe that these facts corroborate Lewis’s testimony that 
signing the entry was only to show his client what an entry granting driving 
privileges looked like; it was not intended to make anyone believe that the entry 
was genuine.  Thus, while signing the entry for any reason was still an incredibly 
foolish act and a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct, I believe that it 
was not done with the intent to benefit his client or to defraud the judge or the 
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judicial system.  Because of these facts, and because this is Lewis’s first 
disciplinary violation, I would impose a stayed one-year suspension of Lewis’s 
license to practice law.  Accordingly, I respectfully dissent. 
 
LANZINGER, J., concurs in the foregoing opinion. 
__________________ 
 
John C. Oberholtzer, John Crilly, and Kelly O’Kell, for relator. 
 
Crabbe, Brown & James, L.L.P., Larry H. James, and Christina L. Corl, 
for respondent. 
______________________