Opinion ID: 1177173
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: check payable to uneedus

Text: The agreement by which petitioner was retained provided that his fee would be 40 percent of any sums recovered, including any fees awarded by the court. The check for $44,018.74, payable to Uneedus, was the balance of the settlement proceeds remaining after subtracting the amounts of the check for payment of Uneedus' tax obligations and the check for petitioner's fees and costs. Petitioner testified that he told Daniel he was having the client's share of the settlement paid directly to Uneedus by cashier's check to avoid the routine that would be necessary if a single check were made payable jointly to attorney and client for the total amount due both of them. Petitioner further stated that he sent the Uneedus check to Daniel by express mail because Daniel had said he was anxious to get it before Christmas. Daniel testified as follows: He never did see the original of the Uneedus check and did not see even a photocopy of it until 1982 when he received a copy from petitioner's attorneys. On December 9, 1978, petitioner telephoned that the case had been settled. Daniel subsequently received a check for $43,008.06 (not $44,018.74) drawn on petitioner's general account (not trust account). Daniel's only written record of receiving the latter check was a notation in his checkbook of a deposit on December 22, 1978, of $43,008.06, for which he received immediate credit (rather than the check's being held for collection). He had been unable to find his copy of the deposit slip, which would have shown the check's bank number, but he denied that the amount of the deposit was the sum of a check for $44,018.74 less cash. As for the Great Western check to Uneedus for $44,018.74, Daniel testified that the indorsement on the back appears to be my signature, but I never signed the check. I would say it was probably a photocopy from something.... [I]t looks like a photocopy of my signature. The copies of the front and back of the Uneedus check produced by Great Western show that the check was drawn by Great Western on December 12, 1978, with Union Bank, in Los Angeles, as agent. The only two indorsements shown on the back are (1) Uneedus  Bill Daniel and (2) Paid  Union Bank  Los Angeles, CA dated December 27, 1978. The State Bar suggests no explanation for how the Uneedus-Daniel indorsement could have appeared on the back of the check other than in the course of the check's being negotiated through the banking system, in light of the fact that the copy in evidence came directly from the business records of Great Western. There is no indication that the State Bar made any effort to obtain the original of the Uneedus check from Great Western so as to ascertain whether Daniel's apparent indorsement was, as he claimed, a photocopy of my signature and to discover any other significant markings that were not reproduced in the photocopy. Nor does there appear any attempt by the State Bar to seek bank records that might establish the existence of a check drawn by petitioner for $43,008.06, testified to by Daniel. On the foregoing evidence the hearing panel found: [The] check (#XXXXXXXXX) made payable to Uneedus Corporation in the sum of $44,018.74 was received by [petitioner]. William Daniel did not endorse said check. Said check was negotiated. William Daniel received, on behalf of Uneedus Corporation, the sum of $43,008.06 paid in the form of a check drawn on [petitioner's] account. Besides making that finding, the panel included the $1,010.68 difference between $44,018.74 and $43,008.06 in the amounts that it recommended requiring petitioner to repay to Daniel as a condition of probation. The review department not only adopted the foregoing finding but added that the check was negotiated by [petitioner] without authority from William Daniel. It further added: [Petitioner] did not account to William Daniel for the $1,010.68 difference between the $44,018.74 check received and the $43,008.06 check paid and [petitioner] misappropriated said $1,010.68. The review department's findings which the hearing panel refrained from making  that it was petitioner who negotiated the Uneedus check and that he misappropriated the $1,010.68 difference  raise further factual questions. Daniel testified that he deposited a $43,008.06 check from petitioner on December 22, 1978; yet the photocopy of the back of the Uneedus check for $44,018.74 shows it did not clear Union Bank until December 27, five days later. Petitioner testified he did not have the funds to back the $43,008.06 check described by Daniel, and though the hearing panel was not required to accept petitioner's testimony, there remains no explanation of why he would issue that check without first obtaining the proceeds of the Uneedus check. It is true that the other two settlement checks, which were indorsed by petitioner and cleared on December 15, totaled almost $45,000, but one of them, which was for $39,037.62, was made payable jointly to petitioner and his bank, and there is no basis for disbelieving petitioner's testimony that the purpose of the joint payability was to facilitate discharge of petitioner's debt to the bank for a loan. The principles governing our review of the findings of the hearing panel and the review department are well settled. (1) The findings are not binding on this court, and we must independently weigh the evidence and make our own factual determinations. ( Mayo v. State Bar (1978) 23 Cal.3d 72, 74 [151 Cal. Rptr. 345, 587 P.2d 1158].) [W]hile it is not essential that the proof of guilt be established beyond a reasonable doubt, yet the charges must be sustained by convincing proof to a reasonable certainty and any reasonable doubts should be resolved in favor of the accused. ( Golden v. The State Bar (1931) 213 Cal. 237, 247 [2 P.2d 325]; accord, Hildebrand v. State Bar (1941) 18 Cal.2d 816, 834 [117 P.2d 860]; Furman v. State Bar (1938) 12 Cal.2d 212, 229 [83 P.2d 12].) The findings of the panel and review department must be given great weight and the burden is on petitioner to show that they are erroneous (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6083, subd. (c); Himmel v. State Bar (1971) 4 Cal.3d 786, 794 [94 Cal. Rptr. 825, 484 P.2d 993]), but that burden may be met by a demonstration that the charges of unprofessional conduct are not sustained by convincing proof to a reasonable certainty. (2) In asking us to sustain the finding that petitioner misappropriated $1,010.68, the State Bar stresses mainly the inadequacies of the petition for review. Even though we agree with some of the State Bar's criticisms, inadequacies in the attorney's response to disciplinary proceedings do not necessarily remedy gaps in affirmative proof supporting the essential findings. While great weight must be given the hearing panel's apparent acceptance of Daniel's testimony concerning his receipt and deposit of a $43,008.06 check from petitioner, this court, as the ultimate trier of fact in attorney disciplinary cases, may disbelieve and reject testimony even when it is not so inherently improbable that its rejection by a reviewing court would be a proper basis for reversal on appeal. (See People v. Mayberry (1975) 15 Cal.3d 143, 150 [125 Cal. Rptr. 745, 542 P.2d 1337] (reversibility on appeal).) Given the circumstances already described, including Daniel's admission that the indorsement on the Uneedus check appears to be my signature, we perceive no convincing proof to a reasonable certainty that the check was negotiated by petitioner, rather than by Uneedus, or that petitioner made out and sent another check to Daniel for a lesser amount and misappropriated the difference.