In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 05-1014

CREWS & ASSOCIATES, INC.,

Plaintiff,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

APPEAL OF:

CORNELIUS THOMAS DUCEY, JR.,

Appellant.

____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 03 CV 154—G. Patrick Murphy, Chief Judge.

____________

SUBMITTED MAY 31, 2006—DECIDED AUGUST 16, 2006

____________

Before KANNE, EVANS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

KANNE, Circuit Judge. Thomas Ducey, an attorney

(whose license is currently suspended), appeals from a

disqualification order entered against him in this case. His

clients did not join this appeal. As we explain below, the

appeal is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

This case has its roots in the activities of a man named

James Gibson who, for a while, ran a company providing
2 No. 05-1014

1 The facts we recite regarding Gibson are not disputed by any

party to this case. We assume them to be accurate for purposes of

this case only. Gibson currently has a criminal appeal pending

with this court. He pled guilty to various charges, but the

resultant convictions and sentence were reversed in United States

v. Gibson, 356 F.3d 761 (7th Cir. 2004). On remand, Gibson

was tried and convicted on various counts of mail fraud and

money laundering. At the time this opinion was published, his

appeal with this court in No. 05-4327 remained pending.

structured settlements to personal injury plaintiffs.1 The

settlement funds of Gibson’s clients were initially held with

legitimate trust companies, including Magna Bank. Gibson

then decided to take the money out of the bank and put it

into a corporation. Magna Bank balked, thinking that it

was illegal for Gibson to transfer the trust funds. Gibson

hired Ducey to fight the bank, and the duo was successful

in removing the monies from the bank and placing them in

a corporation controlled by Gibson. Ducey’s representation

of Gibson ended shortly thereafter. Gibson then began to

steal the money he was supposed to be holding in trust for

his clients. When a federal investigation began, Gibson and

his wife fled to Belize on a luxury yacht (they were eventually arrested and returned to the United States).

Gibson was not able to loot everything before he fled the

country. Several million dollars were left with Crews &

Associates (“Crews”), a legitimate investment firm. On

December 29, 1999, Crews filed an interpleader action in

the Eastern District of Missouri for purposes of dispersing

the money. Numerous tort victims filed claims for the

money. Thirty-nine of these victims were represented by

none other than Ducey. Several motions to disqualify Ducey

were filed based upon his previous representation of

Gibson. On December 5, 2001, after an evidentiary hearing

spanning two days, Judge E. Richard Webber entered a

sixty-two page order granting the motions to disqualify.
No. 05-1014 3

Judge Webber ruled that Ducey could not represent any

plaintiff in the action because Ducey might be called upon

to testify as a witness.

On March 6, 2003, Judge Webber ordered the case

transferred to the Southern District of Illinois pursuant to

28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). Without saying a word about Judge

Webber’s disqualification order, Ducey began to file papers

on behalf of two clients—Martina Mertens-Stone (“Stone”)

and Roy Muir (“Muir”). At some point, it came to the

attention of the government (who had since become a party)

that Ducey had been disqualified. The government alerted

Chief Judge Murphy to this fact. On November 2, 2004,

Judge Murphy entered an order confirming that Ducey

remained disqualified. Ducey shot back with an obstreperous fourteen-page Motion to Vacate accusing Judge Murphy

of all kinds of error. Contemporaneously, Stone and Muir,

proceeding pro se, filed a motion for reconsideration

requesting a greater share of the funds than had been

previously allotted to them.

On December 1, 2004, Judge Murphy entered an order

dispersing all of the funds. This order granted Stone

and Muir their request for a greater share, and the order

noted that Ducey “remains DISQUALIFIED from representing any person in this action, and he shall have no

interest in anything recovered by any person in this action.”

(emphasis in original.)

Ducey then filed the present appeal. He raises several

arguments ranging from the superficially appealing (focusing on the differences between Missouri’s and Illinois’s

Professional Responsibility Rules), to the preposterous

(Judge Murphy lacked jurisdiction to sanction him because

such authority is vested solely with the Illinois Supreme

Court), to the downright audacious (Judge Murphy “allowed” Ducey to be in the case for months by not sua sponte

ordering him to stop making filings). Each has fundamental
4 No. 05-1014

2 Notwithstanding Ducey’s arguments to the contrary, Judge

Webber’s order disqualifying him remained in effect after the case

was transferred to the Southern District of Illinois. See McMasters

v. United States, 260 F.3d 814, 818 (7th Cir. 2001) (explaining that

the law of the case doctrine applies when a case is transferred

between district courts) (citing Christianson v. Colt Indus.

Operating Corp., 486 U.S. 800, 815-16 (1988)).

legal and factual problems, but we need not and should not

address them because we lack jurisdiction to do so.

One requirement of Article III standing is that a “favorable decision will likely redress the injury.” Area Transp.,

Inc. v. Ettinger, 219 F.3d 671, 672 (7th Cir. 2000) (citations

omitted). In Analytica, Inc. v. NPD Research, Inc., we

addressed the circumstance of a law firm appealing a

disqualification order without the participation of the client

and held that the law firm had no standing to appeal

because, absent the client’s participation in the appeal,

there was no reason to think the firm would be rehired. 708

F.2d 1263, 1266 (7th Cir. 1983). Therefore, the law firm had

no “tangible object . . . in seeking reversal of the order

disqualifying it.” Id.

The same goes here. Ducey has not represented anyone in

this case since December 2001 when Judge Webber entered

his disqualification order.2

 If we reversed that order now, it

would not change the fact that Ducey has not represented

Stone or Muir since then. Because the case is over, a

reversal of that order would also not provide Ducey with the

opportunity to represent Stone and Muir. After Judge

Webber’s disqualification order, the case proceeded to a

resolution without Ducey (despite the fact he continued to

hang around hoping nobody would notice he had been

disqualified). There is no way we can place him back in this

case now.

Ducey attempts to paint Judge Murphy’s December 1,

2004 order as a sanction. Ducey would have standing to
No. 05-1014 5

appeal a monetary sanction. Analytica, 708 F.3d at 1266.

But that is not what Judge Murphy did. Ducey, as he has

told us, represented Stone and Muir on a contingent basis.

Thus, Ducey gets paid if and when he wins the case for

them. But Ducey did not win the case. It was not possible

for him to do so because he was kicked out of the case back

in 2001. All we read Judge Murphy’s comments about

Ducey’s inability to collect fees to be is stating in another

way that Ducey was and remained disqualified.

Ducey’s real problem is that Stone and Muir have declined to give him a percentage of the $370,000 Judge

Murphy awarded them. Their reluctance does not surprise us. Stone and Muir were able to garner a higher

percentage of the recovery while proceeding pro se. Ducey

was not their lawyer when they recovered the money and

there is nothing we can do now to change that.

Ducey also cites Walker v. City of Mesquite, 129 F.3d 831,

832 (5th Cir. 1997), to argue that a controversy exists

because his reputation has been damaged by Judge

Webber’s disqualification order and Judge Murphy’s refusal

to reverse it. Ducey fails to point out that the Walker court

noted our precedent is the exact opposite. See id., (quoting

Clark Equip. Co. v. Lifts Parts Mfg. Co., 972 F.2d 817, 820

(7th Cir. 1992) (“[W]e have already decided that an attorney

may not appeal from an order that finds misconduct but

does not result in monetary liability, despite the potential

reputational effects.”)).

Ducey does not ask us to reconsider our precedent, and we

certainly see no reason to do so in this case. As Ducey has

taken pains to point out, Judge Webber disqualified him

only on the relatively innocuous basis that Ducey might be

a necessary witness. We cannot see, and Ducey has not told

us, how such a ruling would harm his reputation. And,

anyway, Ducey has much bigger reputational problems than

a disqualification order. Two months before Ducey vehe-
6 No. 05-1014

mently argued to Judge Murphy that he should not be

disqualified from representing Stone and Muir, a panel of

the Hearing Board of the Illinois Attorney Registration and

Disciplinary Committee had already found that Ducey’s

representation of Stone and other former clients of Gibson’s

violated Rule 1.9(a) of the Illinois Rules of Professional

Conduct, Conflict of Interest: Former Client. In re Cornelius

Thomas Ducey, Jr., No. 01 SH 118, at 54 (Sept. 2, 2004).

That Hearing Board found sufficient evidence that Ducey

had committed sanctionable misconduct in a number of

different cases, id., and so did a separate board on the basis

of another complaint. See In re Cornelius Thomas Ducey,

Jr., No. 03 SH 123 (June 6, 2005). Both Hearing Boards

recommended that Ducey’s license be suspended, and he is

currently suspended pending the resolution of these

proceedings. Any reputational problems Ducey may have

are of his own doing.

For the foregoing reasons, this appeal is DISMISSED for

lack of jurisdiction.

A true Copy:

Teste: 

 ________________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—8-16-06