the Dogs that Didn’t Bark
By: Stephanie Volin
Tags: Corruption, Government, Ethics, Oregon, Lawyers

As Perry’s misconduct began to be reported by her victims themselves — in an avalanche that started in late 2016 and gained critical mass the following fall — the Oregon State Bar revealed that their duty to protect the public from bad lawyers took a backseat to their duty to prop up public perception of themselves and the Oregon judiciary… and to protect their coffers.

In one of Perry’s earliest complaints, a victim stated that the OSB’s Client Assistance Office (CAO) tried to talk him out of filing a complaint, because there was a “good chance” she would “quit representing” him if he did.

At least two other families tried to file complaints by phone with the CAO in 2015 and 2016, and did not receive responses. Both alleged forgeries and notarial mischief by Perry, but due to the overwhelming nature of the problems she had caused them, they were unable to follow up before she was disbarred.

Another complainant was turned away by the CAO in fall 2017 because his opponent — his ex-wife — had already filed a complaint regarding the same matter, and the information he provided did “not support the need to open a second investigation.” That was an extraordinary response by the CAO, because in reading both complaints cover to cover as I did, it is clear that the man’s ex had hired Perry solely to eradicate his parental rights but had largely failed; and due to this, the former couple’s mutual interest in investigating Perry was for profoundly different reasons.

In late January, Perry’s final complaint rolled in, which alleged all the same misconduct for which she was already notorious. Instead of referring this complaint directly to the Disciplinary Counsel Office (DCO), as they had done for the previous six, the CAO strangely asked the victim for more documentation. By the time the victim was able to respond, Perry had already announced her plan to surrender her law license.

The OSB’s Disciplinary Counsel and their General Counsel (i.e. the OSB’s own lawyers) had an even poorer showing regarding Perry than the CAO did.

Mark Johnson Roberts — Deputy General Counsel, “bar liaison” to the Unlawful Practice of Law (UPL) Committee, and recipient of the “hot tip” that the two Linn attorneys had emailed — landed a very difficult-to-execute triple-axel of fail regarding Perry.

It appears that Roberts literally shelved a UPL complaint against Perry. The complaint was correctly submitted to Roberts as liaison to the UPL Committee, then apparently never left his office again. When Roberts was questioned months later about the disappeared complaint, he responded with documents that in my opinion raise more questions than they answer.

Most disturbingly, Roberts was the original recipient of the email by the two attorneys warning the bar that Perry and Moeller were committing criminal offenses and offering to provide information and evidence.

It’s unclear whether the email was discussed and the bar’s response to it coordinated, or whether Roberts took a fashion-forward role in not caring about criminal offenses and simply ignored it by the seat of his pants. What is known is that Roberts assured the concerned attorneys, bizarrely, that destruction of evidence — which in matters of attorney misconduct primarily means client files, i.e. records in the attorney’s custody that are the property of the clients– did not matter, because the OSB already had more than enough evidence for its investigations of Perry.

It would be bad enough if Mark Johnson Roberts were a state bar official who didn’t know any better, but since this is Oregon, Mr. Roberts also frequently writes the “Bar Counsel” ethics column for the OSB’s monthly Bar Bulletin magazine.

Dawn Evans, the Director of Regulatory Services, similarly did not want to hear anything about criminal conduct. In the Polk County case and ensuing complaint, Evans refused to consider or even acknowledge the victim’s concerns that Perry had forged court orders. This was despite the victim providing compelling evidence and the OSB’s now-widespread understanding that Perry was forging items in several other cases.

In early 2018, Assistant Disciplinary Counsel, Susan Cournoyer, who investigated most of Perry’s cases, wrote “complaint summaries” for the first five complaints, which she presented to the State Professional Responsibility Board (SPRB). The SPRB acts similarly to a grand jury in the attorney disciplinary process. Three of Cournoyer’s summaries informed the committee of her confidence that documents in one case were forged, and that Perry had “manufactured a custody evaluation report” in another.

In March 2018, the SPRB authorized that formal charges against Perry be filed. At that point, the DCO was required under their own Bar Rule 3.3(a) to “report the possible crime to the appropriate investigatory authority.”

To date, public records requests with Linn County Sheriff’s and Oregon’s Department of Justice have returned zero evidence that the DCO fulfilled that obligation. Consequently, the Office of the Attorney General has shown little interest in investigating or even hearing about Megan Perry.

Their unconcerned attitude exposes their ideology that nothing is real or true unless they hear it from another lawyer. Perhaps they also suffer from the absurd belief that disbarment equals justice in criminal matters, and that a license to practice law is also a license to commit crimes, revoked only upon disbarment.