Title: Disciplinary Counsel v. Engel

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as 
Disciplinary Counsel v. Engel, Slip Opinion No. 2012-Ohio-2168.] 
 
 
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. 2012-OHIO-2168 
DISCIPLINARY COUNSEL v. ENGEL. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets,  
it may be cited as Disciplinary Counsel v. Engel,  
Slip Opinion No. 2012-Ohio-2168.] 
Attorneys—Misconduct—Two violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct—
Six-month license suspension. 
(No. 2011-1722—Submitted December 7, 2011—Decided May 17, 2012.) 
ON CERTIFIED REPORT by the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and 
Discipline of the Supreme Court, No. 11-004. 
__________________ 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Respondent, Joshua Adam Engel, of Wilmington, Ohio, Attorney 
Registration No. 0075769, was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 2003.  
On February 14, 2011, relator, disciplinary counsel, filed a complaint alleging that 
while serving as chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Public Safety 
(“DPS”), Engel used an e-mail filter to intercept confidential communications, 
including investigatory materials belonging to the Ohio Inspector General and 
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Ohio Ethics Commission, the United States Attorney, and the United States 
Department of Justice.  As a result of this conduct, Engel pleaded guilty to three 
third-degree misdemeanor charges of disclosing confidential information 
belonging to the inspector general.  Relator alleged that Engel also violated 
Prof.Cond.R. 8.4(d) (prohibiting a lawyer from engaging in conduct that is 
prejudicial to the administration of justice) and (h) (prohibiting a lawyer from 
engaging in conduct that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness to practice 
law). 
{¶ 2} The Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline 
rejected the parties’ consent-to-discipline agreement, which had recommended a 
public reprimand.  Although the parties entered into stipulated findings of fact, 
misconduct, and mitigation, a three-member panel of the board conducted a 
hearing in which it heard testimony from Engel and three character witnesses and 
received a number of exhibits.  Relator  recommended a stayed six-month license 
suspension. The panel adopted Engel’s proposed sanction of a public reprimand, 
and the board adopted the panel’s report in its entirety.  We adopt the board’s 
findings of fact and misconduct.  But for the reasons that follow, we conclude that 
a six-month actual suspension from the practice of law is the appropriate sanction 
for Engel’s misconduct. 
Misconduct 
{¶ 3} Engel served as chief legal counsel to DPS from December 2007 to 
May 2010.  He testified that during his tenure, DPS had a poor working 
relationship with the inspector general, an autonomous investigator appointed by 
the governor to investigate wrongdoing within state offices and law enforcement.  
DPS also conducted confidential investigations.  The inspector general did not 
have a sufficient number of investigators and developed a practice of cherry-
picking DPS’s highway-patrol employees—without the knowledge or consent of 
the DPS director—to conduct his investigations.  Concerned that this process 
January Term, 2012 
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impeded his ability to legally protect these borrowed employees or account for 
their work product, however, Engel met with the director of DPS, the governor’s 
office, and the inspector general to object to the inspector general’s practice.  No 
resolution was reached. 
{¶ 4} At Engel’s disciplinary hearing, one witness testified that on 
numerous occasions, a Columbus Dispatch reporter had received information 
related to confidential DPS investigations before the director of DPS received it.  
Engel suspected that the leaks were from the DPS personnel conscripted by the 
inspector general, through the inspector general’s office, to the press.  The leaks 
suggested to Engel and his staff that the legal advice and information that they 
gave to DPS employees were not being held in confidence.  But there were no 
procedures in place to resolve such interdepartmental disputes or to discover the 
source of such media leaks. 
{¶ 5} DPS had a departmental policy stating that employees had no right 
of privacy to e-mails on the state e-mail system.  Therefore, in an effort to find the 
source of the leaks, Engel instructed DPS information-technology personnel to 
create an e-mail filter that would capture DPS employee e-mails to and from 
media outlets, as well as e-mails sent to DPS employees by the inspector general’s 
office.  Copies of these e-mails “trapped” by the filter were forwarded to Engel 
and his designees.  But because several DPS employees were working on 
assignments for the inspector general and not DPS, the filter intercepted 
confidential communications about civil and criminal investigations that the 
inspector general was conducting with the Ohio Ethics Commission, the United 
States Attorney’s Office, and the United States Department of Justice.  The filter 
then sent copies of these confidential communications to persons who were not 
authorized to receive them, including Engel.  Recklessly disclosing inspector-
general confidential information is a misdemeanor criminal offense. 
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{¶ 6} Engel did not intend to capture confidential information.  Upon 
questioning by the panel, Engel testified that he recalled intercepting only one 
confidential e-mail, but acknowledged that there may have been more, and he 
kept the filter in place for almost a year.  In hindsight, he agreed that he should 
have terminated the filter when he discovered that it had captured confidential 
information.  As a result of this conduct, Engel was charged with and pleaded 
guilty to three third-degree misdemeanor counts of disclosing confidential 
inspector-general information, and he received a 30-day suspended jail sentence 
and a $750 fine on each count.  State v. Engel, Franklin C.P. No. 10CR-10-6185 
(Oct. 26, 2010). 
{¶ 7} The parties have stipulated and the board has found that Engel’s 
conduct violated Prof.Cond.R. 8.4(d) and (h).  We adopt the board’s findings of 
fact and misconduct. 
Sanction 
{¶ 8} In recommending a sanction, the panel and board considered the 
aggravating and mitigating factors listed in BCGD Proc.Reg. 10.  See Stark Cty. 
Bar Assn. v. Buttacavoli, 96 Ohio St.3d 424, 2002-Ohio-4743, 775 N.E.2d 818, 
¶ 16.   
{¶ 9} The parties stipulated that three mitigating factors are present: the 
absence of a prior disciplinary record, cooperation with the disciplinary process, 
and the imposition of the additional penalties of criminal convictions and 
sentencing.  BCGD Proc.Reg. 10(B)(2)(a), (d), and (f).  The board accepted those 
mitigating factors and also found that Engel did not possess a dishonest or selfish 
motive and that he had presented evidence of his good character apart from the 
underlying misconduct.  BCGD Proc.Reg. 10(B)(2)(b) and (e).  The board found 
no aggravating factors and that Engel’s conduct caused no harm to anyone but 
himself. 
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{¶ 10} Relator now recommends a six-month stayed suspension for 
Engel’s misconduct.  Engel, on the other hand, argues that a public reprimand is 
the appropriate sanction. 
{¶ 11} The board noted that multiple character witnesses attested to 
Engel’s honesty, integrity, and dedication and that the record contains ample 
evidence of his public service, beginning in 1992 with the award of a Truman 
scholarship for public service while he attended the University of Pennsylvania.  
The board also found that Engel began to suffer from job-related stress, which 
was exacerbated by the criminal and disciplinary proceedings and has led to 
severe depression and suicidal thoughts.  He has voluntarily sought psychiatric 
care and psychological counseling, and there is no claim that he is mentally unfit 
to practice law.  Engel continues his significant pro bono work for the citizens of 
Clinton County. 
{¶ 12} Citing these factors and Disciplinary Counsel v. Taft, 112 Ohio 
St.3d 155, 2006-Ohio-6525, 858 N.E.2d 414, the board concluded that a public 
reprimand was the appropriate sanction for Engel’s misconduct.  There, we 
disciplined then Governor Robert Taft for engaging in conduct that adversely 
reflected on his fitness to practice law by failing comply with financial-disclosure 
laws regarding gifts worth $5,682.26.  Id. at ¶ 4-6, ¶ 15.  In imposing a public 
reprimand, we considered the absence of a prior disciplinary record, Taft’s long 
and unblemished career in public office, his cooperation in the disciplinary 
proceedings, his timely, good-faith efforts to make restitution, and the sanctions 
imposed for his four misdemeanor convictions for violating R.C. 102.02(D) 
(prohibiting any person from knowing filing a false disclosure statement).  Id. at 
¶ 7, 10.  We adopted the board’s findings that Taft’s nondisclosures were the 
result of oversight, rather than a conscious effort to conceal certain relationships, 
and acknowledged that he himself had reported his ethical lapse and had publicly 
apologized for his personal failure to maintain the standards of integrity to which 
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all public officials must adhere.  Id. at ¶ 11.  We also adopted the board’s 
reasoning that Taft’s carelessness distinguished his case from others that resulted 
in stayed suspensions for lawyers who deliberately withheld that which they were 
required by law to reveal.  Id. at ¶ 12. 
{¶ 13} Engel did not intend to intercept confidential information relating 
to ethics and law-enforcement investigations when he installed the e-mail filter.  
But when he discovered that the e-mail filter was intercepting such information, 
he did nothing to stop it and left the filter in place for “a couple months, maybe 
going on a year.”  The board found that Engel had harmed only himself and 
declined to increase his sanction based on the potential for inchoate harm arising 
from his misconduct.  We find, however, that his distribution of confidential 
information about pending law-enforcement and ethics investigations to those 
who were not authorized to receive such information—while he served as chief 
legal counsel for DPS—worked to undermine public trust not only in the legal 
system, but in state government as a whole.  Unlike Taft, who was found to have 
violated the prohibition against a lawyer’s engaging in conduct that adversely 
reflects on his fitness to practice law with his inadvertent failure to comply with 
financial-disclosure laws, Engel acted recklessly and stipulated that his conduct 
adversely reflected on his fitness to practice law and that it was prejudicial to the 
administration of justice.  For these reasons, we find that a greater sanction is 
warranted.  Accordingly, we suspend Joshua Adam Engel from the practice of law 
in Ohio for six months.  Costs are taxed to Engel. 
Judgment accordingly. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and PFEIFER, O’DONNELL, LANZINGER, and CUPP, JJ., 
concur. 
LUNDBERG STRATTON, J., dissents. 
MCGEE BROWN, J., not participating. 
__________________ 
January Term, 2012 
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LUNDBERG STRATTON, J., dissenting. 
{¶ 14} I respectfully dissent.  The panel adopted Engel’s proposed 
sanction of a public reprimand, and the board adopted the panel’s report in its 
entirety.  The relator recommended a stayed six-month license suspension.  
However, this court has increased the sanction to a six-month actual suspension. 
{¶ 15} The parties stipulated that three mitigating factors are present: the 
absence of a prior disciplinary record, cooperation with the disciplinary process, 
and the imposition of the additional penalties of criminal convictions and 
sentencing.  The board accepted these mitigating factors and also found that Engel 
did not possess a dishonest or selfish motive and that he had presented evidence 
of his good character apart from the underlying misconduct.  The board concluded 
that there were no aggravating factors and that Engel’s conduct caused no harm to 
anyone but himself. 
{¶ 16} The panel had the opportunity to personally observe Engel and 
judge his credibility.  I see no reason for this court to second-guess the panel’s 
determinations.  Furthermore, the increase in penalty is out of proportion to the 
violation.  Compare Disciplinary Counsel v. Forbes, 122 Ohio St.3d 171, 2009-
Ohio-2623, 909 N.E.2d 629.  I see no justice in increasing the penalty beyond all 
current recommendations.  Therefore, I respectfully dissent. 
__________________ 
Jonathan E. Coughlan, Disciplinary Counsel, and Robert R. Berger, 
Assistant Disciplinary Counsel, for relator. 
Crabbe, Brown, and James, L.L.P, Larry H. James, and Christina Curl, for 
respondent. 
______________________