Opinion ID: 2284393
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the buckley decision

Text: The four members of the Board who recommended disbarment relied heavily on this court's 2:1 decision in Buckley. Chief Judge Rogers has assembled an imposing array of authoritiesmany of them involving far more extensive wrongdoing than that here presentedin support of the position that Addams should be disbarred, but she too relies significantly on Buckley. Whether or not disbarment of the respondent in Buckley was appropriateand, like Judge Mack, who dissented, I have some reservations on that scoreI think that we should reject at least some of the language in the Buckley opinion.
In Buckley, the majority rejected as rather imprecise and unhelpful the Board's view that it was proper, for purposes of determining what discipline should be imposed, to differentiate between corrupt and non-corrupt misappropriations. 535 A.2d at 866. Citing In re Harrison, 461 A.2d 1034, 1036 (D.C.1983), the court effectively held that there was no difference for purposes of sanction between a lawyer's temporary use of his client's funds on the one hand and outright theft on the other. Id. This apparently means that a lawyer who, awaiting receipt of a government check on Tuesday, borrows $100 on Monday from a client's account and returns that sum on Tuesday, should be subject to the same sanction as a practitioner who steals $50,000, spends it to support an extravagant lifestyle, and thereafter covers his tracks. The basic purpose of disciplinary proceedings is to protect the public, the courts, and the legal profession from the depredations of unethical practitioners. See, e.g., In re Haupt, 422 A.2d 768, 771 (D.C.1980). [2] Sanctions are also designed to deter other attorneys from engaging in similar misconduct. In re Reback, 513 A.2d 226, 231 (D.C.1986) (en banc) . Even temporary misappropriation of a client's funds is a very serious matter, but it surely cannot be gainsaid that the public needs greater protection from the corrupt thief than from the non-corrupt but culpable cutter of corners who never intended to steal. That is why, in selecting the proper sanction for other violations of the Code of Professional Conduct, we have found the presence or absence of a fraudulent intent or state of mind to be so important. See, e.g., In re Hutchinson, 518 A.2d 995, 1000 (D.C.1986). Our purpose in imposing discipline is not to visit punishment upon an attorney. In re Kersey, 520 A.2d 321, 327 (D.C.1987); In re Hutchinson, 518 A.2d 995, 1000 (1986). Nevertheless, in determining what sanction is appropriate, we must consider the moral fitness of the attorney, to the extent that we can discern it. Hutchinson, supra, 518 A.2d at 1000. Although the unauthorized short-time borrower who intends to return what he borrowed is no paragon of virtue, the moral gravity of his conduct obviously pales in comparison to the wickedness intrinsic in outright theft from a client who has placed his trust in his treacherous attorney. The majority in Buckley probably did not mean to suggest that temporary and non-corrupt misappropriation is just as bad as its permanent and corrupt counterpart. It did hold, however, that the former ought to be punished just as harshly as the latter; that taking property without right will incur the same consequences as grand larceny. I cannot agree that violations so lacking in moral equivalence may properly be treated as one and the same. I have no problem with applying a rebuttable presumption of disbarment even in a temporary borrowing case, but I think that the presence or absence of an intent to steal is an important factor in determining whether the presumption has been rebutted. [3]
In Buckley, the court also effectively held that, even in non-corrupt misappropriation cases, conventional mitigating factors will not justify less severe discipline. The court acknowledged that the ultimate harm suffered by [Buckley's] client was relatively slight, that Buckley had been cooperative and candid during the Board's investigation, [4] and that he had an otherwise clean disciplinary record of thirty years. 535 A.2d at 866. Buckley being a misappropriation case, however, these circumstances were not viewed as providing support for a sanction less severe than disbarment. In In re Reback, 513 A.2d 226 (D.C.1986) (en banc) , the respondent attorneys, seeking to conceal from their client that her divorce complaint had been dismissed by the court because the attorneys had negligently failed to place it at issue, forged the client's signature on a new complaint, secured a notarization of the false signature, and filed a new complaint without advising the client. The client nevertheless learned of these events and discharged the attorneys. Disciplinary proceedings ensued. The Hearing Committee recommended public censure as the appropriate discipline. A majority of the Board proposed suspensions of a year and a day for the senior lawyer and thirty days for the less experienced one. [5] This court, sitting en banc, ordered that each be suspended for six months. Apparently, the sanction of disbarment was not considered, in spite of the patently fraudulent character of the respondents' conduct. In concluding that suspension for as long a period as a year and a day was not necessary, this court cited respondents' contrition, their cooperation with the investigation, the fact that they had returned the client's fee, and the lack of any significant injury to the client. The court placed its greatest emphasis, however, on respondents' status as first offenders: Most important is the fact that both Reback and Parsons have had unblemished records of professional conduct during 30 and 15 years of practice, respectively. This factor weighs heavily in favor of imposing upon them the lightest sanction that will serve the purposes of Bar discipline. Id. at 233 (emphasis added). In my opinion, the respondents in Reback sullied the name of our profession, and more severe discipline might well have been in order. Nevertheless, if one views the case in the context of the purposes of the disciplinary process, the court was surely right in concluding that a respondent's prior record must be given significant consideration. I believe that this holds true generally, at least in those cases in which the underlying violation does not call for automatic disbarment. An attorney who commits a single violation which represents an isolated aberration from the norm of ethical professional conduct is far less likely to be a danger to the public, the court, or to the Bar than a colleague who has a significant record of prior misconduct. From the perspective of moral fitness, the recidivist is uniformly viewed as more culpable, more dangerous, and more deserving of severe sanctions than is the first offender. It may be that an unblemished record, standing alone, ought not to preclude disbarment in a misappropriation case. Perhaps this should be true even where the misappropriation was non-corrupt, although one might reasonably argue for a contrary result. But where, as here, there are significant case-specific mitigating factors, I think that basic fairness requires us to accord considerable weight to Addams' favorable prior record. [6]