[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as 

Cleveland Metro. Bar Assn. v. Belinger, Slip Opinion No. 2015-Ohio-4436.] 

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. 2015-OHIO-4436

CLEVELAND METROPOLITAN BAR ASSOCIATION v. BELINGER.

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 

may be cited as Cleveland Metro. Bar Assn. v. Belinger, Slip Opinion No. 

2015-Ohio-4436.] 

Attorneys―Misconduct―Failure to explain legal matter to client to permit client 

to make informed decision―Failure to comply with requests for 

information―Failure to keep client informed of status of legal 

matter―One-year suspension, six months stayed. 

(No. 2015-0292—Submitted April 14, 2015—Decided October 28, 2015.) 

ON CERTIFIED REPORT by the Board of Professional Conduct of the Supreme 

Court, No. 2014-028. 

_______________________ 

Per Curiam.

{¶ 1} Respondent, Robert James Belinger of Independence, Ohio, Attorney 

Registration No. 0017661, was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 1975. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

2

{¶ 2} On March 19, 2014, relator, Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, 

filed a complaint against Belinger with the Board of Commissioners on Grievances 

and Discipline.1 A single count alleged that while serving as the trustee of a living 

trust, Belinger failed to reasonably communicate with the last remaining 

beneficiary, who is also his cousin. 

{¶ 3} The parties submitted stipulated facts, rule violations, aggravating and 

mitigating factors, and exhibits. After a hearing, a panel of the board issued a report 

in which it made findings of fact incorporating the parties’ stipulations and adopted 

the parties’ stipulations of misconduct, aggravating and mitigating factors, and their 

recommendation that Belinger be publicly reprimanded. The board adopted the 

panel’s findings of fact, conclusions of law, and most, but not all, of its findings in 

aggravation and mitigation. It recommended, however, that Belinger be suspended 

from the practice of law for one year with the final six months stayed on the 

conditions that he engage in no further misconduct and pay the costs of these 

proceedings. 

{¶ 4} We adopt the board’s findings of fact, conclusions of law, and 

recommended sanction. 

Misconduct

{¶ 5} Belinger’s cousin, Sister Barbara Cervenka, is a Dominican nun who 

resides in Michigan. She is the sole surviving beneficiary of a living trust that 

Belinger created for his aunt and uncle, Annette and James Cervenka, Barbara’s 

father and stepmother, in 1992. At all times relevant herein, Belinger served as the 

trustee for the trust and was vested with broad discretion to manage trust assets. 

Pursuant to that authority, he made bridge loans secured with real estate and shortterm mortgages as investment tools for the trust, and he was paid for his services. 

 

1

 Effective January 1, 2015, the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline has been 

renamed the Board of Professional Conduct. See Gov.Bar R. V(1)(A), 140 Ohio St.3d CII. 
January Term, 2015 

3

{¶ 6} In 2004, Belinger loaned $100,000 at 7 percent interest to Bar-Bel, 

Ltd., a company owned by his sons and in which he had a financial interest. 

Although he sent Cervenka a letter stating that the trust had made a $100,000 

commercial loan, that letter did not advise her that the loan was unsecured, that 

Belinger had personally guaranteed it, or that he had a financial interest in the 

borrower. Belinger testified, however, that he had told Cervenka that the loan was 

unsecured and that it was a “family project of sorts.” 

{¶ 7} In the promissory note, Bar-Bel promised to repay the loan in 36 

monthly installments of $665.31 with the remaining balance due on December 15, 

2007. But Bar-Bel’s business was totally dependent on the real estate market and 

when the market crashed, the company experienced great financial difficulty. To 

offset some of that difficulty, Belinger applied his statutory trustee fees to the loan, 

but the loan eventually went into default. 

{¶ 8} In addition to the Bar-Bel loan, Belinger made a blanket loan to his 

friend Larry Vagner from the trust. When he restructured that loan sometime in 

2004, it had a balance of approximately $350,000. In January 2005, Belinger 

informed Cervenka that the trust was short on cash and that Vagner had fallen 

behind on his payments. Vagner made sporadic payments until defaulting on the 

loan sometime in 2007 or 2008. 

{¶ 9} Belinger personally filed for bankruptcy in October 2010 and listed 

his personal guarantee of the Bar-Bel loan as an unsecured claim on his schedule 

of assets and liabilities. Belinger did not inform Cervenka that he had filed for 

bankruptcy or inform her in writing that the trust was a creditor in the proceeding. 

And he did not promptly return her telephone calls. 

{¶ 10} Eventually, Cervenka retained a Michigan attorney to contact 

Belinger and take over all aspects of the trust. She then terminated Belinger as 

trustee and directed him to transfer the trust assets to her new attorney, whom she 

had appointed to serve as the trustee of a newly created charitable remainder trust. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

4

While Belinger did respond to the new attorney’s request for an accounting, she did 

not believe that his responses were timely. 

{¶ 11} Although Belinger and the trust had been named as defendants in a 

2009 foreclosure action against one of the properties that secured the Vagner loan, 

Belinger never informed the court that he had been terminated as trustee of the 

Cervenka trust and that a new trustee had been appointed. And Cervenka and her 

Michigan attorney did not learn that the loans Belinger had made from the trust 

were in default until April 2011—several years after the defaults occurred. 

{¶ 12} On December 21, 2011, shortly after learning of Belinger’s personal 

bankruptcy filing, Cervenka and her new attorney filed suit against Belinger for 

breach of his fiduciary duties in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. 

That litigation was resolved with a settlement agreement that included complete 

restitution for the Bar-Bel loan, which was paid through Belinger’s professionalliability insurer. 

{¶ 13} The parties stipulated and the panel and board found that Belinger 

failed to inform Cervenka of material matters affecting the trust, failed to provide 

an accounting of the loans at issue, failed to inform the beneficiary of litigation 

affecting the trust, and failed to cooperate with Cervenka’s requests for information. 

The parties stipulated and the panel and board found that Belinger’s conduct 

violated Prof.Cond.R. 1.4(a) (requiring a lawyer to promptly inform the client of 

any decision or circumstance to which the client’s informed consent is required, to 

keep the client reasonably informed about the status of a matter, and to comply as 

soon as practicable with reasonable requests for information from the client), and 

1.4(b) (requiring a lawyer to explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to 

permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation). 

Sanction 

{¶ 14} In determining what sanction to recommend to this court, the panel 

and board considered the ethical duties Belinger violated, the presence of 
January Term, 2015 

5

aggravating and mitigating factors listed in BCGD Proc.Reg. 10(B),2 and the 

sanctions imposed in similar cases. 

{¶ 15} The parties stipulated and the panel found that no aggravating factors 

are present and that mitigating factors include the absence of prior discipline, the 

absence of a dishonest or selfish motive, the payment of restitution through 

Belinger’s malpractice insurance, and Belinger’s full and free disclosure to relator 

and cooperation in the disciplinary investigation. See BCGD Proc.Reg. 

10(B)(2)(a), (b), (c), and (d). 

{¶ 16} The parties stipulated and the panel agreed that a public reprimand 

is the appropriate sanction for Belinger’s misconduct. The board, however, rejected 

the panel’s finding that the absence of a selfish or dishonest motive was a mitigating 

factor and instead found that Belinger’s self-dealing by using the Cervenka trust 

assets to make loans to family and friends was an aggravating factor. Therefore, 

the board recommended that Belinger be suspended from the practice of law for 

one year with the final six months stayed on the conditions that he engage in no 

further misconduct and pay the costs of these proceedings. 

{¶ 17} The board did not cite any cases in support of its recommended 

sanction. However, we find Lake Cty. Bar Assn. v. Rozanc, 123 Ohio St.3d 78, 

2009-Ohio-4207, 914 N.E.2d 192, to be instructive. There, we suspended an 

attorney for one year with the final six months stayed on conditions for violations 

of Prof.Cond.R. 1.3 (requiring a lawyer to act with reasonable diligence in 

representing a client) and 1.4 (requiring a lawyer to keep a client reasonably 

informed about the status of a matter and to comply as soon as practicable to 

requests for information) by failing to file documents seeking release of an estate 

from probate administration, failing to return numerous phone calls from the client, 

 

2

 Effective January 1, 2015, the aggravating and mitigating factors previously set forth in BCGD 

Proc.Reg. 10(B)(1) and (2) are codified in Gov.Bar R. V(13), 140 Ohio St.3d CXXIV. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

6

and by failing to respond to another attorney’s requests that he return the decedent’s 

will and the unearned portion of his fee. Id. at ¶ 4-5, 7. 

{¶ 18} Here, while Belinger regularly communicated with Cervenka, he 

stopped providing her with information regarding the loans that he made to his 

family and friends and the resulting problems for the trust, thereby depriving 

Cervenka of the opportunity to question the wisdom of those loans and impairing 

her ability to protect her interest in the corpus of the trust. 

{¶ 19} Having reviewed the record, we adopt the board’s findings of fact, 

misconduct, and aggravating and mitigating factors and agree that a one-year 

suspension with six months stayed on conditions is the appropriate sanction for 

Belinger’s misconduct. 

{¶ 20} Accordingly, Robert James Belinger is suspended from the practice 

of law in Ohio for one year with six months stayed on the conditions that he engage 

in no further misconduct and pay the costs of these proceedings. If Belinger fails 

to comply with the terms of the stay, the stay will be lifted, and he will serve the 

entire one-year suspension. Costs are taxed to Belinger. 

Judgment accordingly. 

PFEIFER, O’DONNELL, LANZINGER, KENNEDY, and O’NEILL, JJ., concur. 

O’CONNOR, C.J., and FRENCH, J., dissent and would not stay any portion of 

the suspension. 

_________________ 

Baker & Hostetler, L.L.P., James A. Loeb, and Suzanne M. Jambe; and 

Heather M. Zirke, Bar Counsel, and K. Ann Zimmerman, for relator. 

Janik L.L.P., Steven K. Janik, and Audrey K. Bentz, for respondent. 

_________________