Money from the Dietz family had been taken by their attorney Craig W. Holt, and never repaid. Mr. Holt was permanently disbarred by the Montana Supreme Court on Oct. 12 for his actions. Montana was one of the first states to establish such a protection fund. The Fund has been in existence 25 years, and paid out thousands of dollars in claims but there has not been a lot of publicity about it, said Jim Murphy, a Billings attorney who has been on the Board of Directors of the Fund since it was founded and has acted as chair for the past four years. Whenever I hear a slam of the legal profession or a bad lawyer joke, I explain the workings of the Lawyers Fund, Mr. Murphy said after the Dietz settlement was announced.
Lawyers are the only ones who do it.
A check for that amount arrived from Old Republic on Dec. 27. It was in early 1999 that the state s Commission on Practice, the Supreme Court arm that investigates alleged wrongdoings by attorneys, found that the money was missing and unaccounted for from an account belonging to the estate of Adolph Dietz, who had died in 1992. Mr. Holt had agreed to account for the missing money and to repay it, neither of which he did, the Commission later reported. Mr. Holt, who was then a Billings attorney and now lives in Nevada, surrendered his license to practice in Montana in April 1999 before the Commission filed its complaint. He lost an appeal in October 2000 against his subsequent disbarment by the Supreme Court.