Opinion ID: 1059771
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Fant Matter

Text: Considering the cases arising under El-Amin's representation of each client, we begin with his representation of Fant. Fant employed El-Amin in June 1994 to represent her in an employment discrimination case. El-Amin agreed to begin working on the case immediately and required Fant to advance a retainer fee of $4,000, which she did by check. He indicated to Fant that he would withdraw funds as he worked on the case and told Fant that he would deposit the retainer in an escrow account. Instead, El-Amin cashed the check and produced no record of having deposited the proceeds in any account. During the following five months, El-Amin had little contact with Fant, despite her numerous telephone calls, letters, and visits to his office. Because of El-Amin's failure to respond to her inquiries, Fant wrote him a letter in late November 1994 discharging him as her counsel and asking for a refund of the retainer. El-Amin telephoned Fant several days later and, admitting to her that he had not done certain work on the case as promised, agreed to refund the money by mail on December 5. Fant testified that when El-Amin did not refund the money as promised, she sued him in the General District Court and mailed him a copy of the warrant. Thereafter, El-Amin contacted Fant and promised to pay $4,000 on December the 20th, 1994, at 11 a.m. Fant went to El-Amin's office at the specified time and he told her that because his wife, who was his law partner, had been hospitalized, he had taken [his wife's] load, and further that he could not charge Fant any money because he had done no work on her case. However, El-Amin refunded only $1,000 at that time. In response to Fant's question of why the payment was in that amount in view of the fact that the $4,000 deposit was supposed to be in escrow, El-Amin said I don't have the money. El-Amin promised to pay the additional $3,000 on January 11, 1995 at 11:00 a.m. When El-Amin failed to refund the remaining $3,000 on January 11, Fant wrote to the State Bar asking for its help in getting her refund. Although Fant delivered a copy of her letter to El-Amin's office on January 12, she received no response from him. On January 17, Fant retained attorney Bradley O. Wein to collect the balance. El-Amin agreed to see Wein at a fixed time on January 23, 1995 in El-Amin's office and to pay the $3,000 balance to Wein at that time. However, El-Amin was not at his office at the appointed time and did not refund the promised sum. Only after Wein had generated a file of over 1,000 pages, expended more than 100 hours during a period of 18 months, and incurred costs of $754.72 did El-Amin refund $2,500 of the $3,000 balance in settlement of Fant's claim. After the deduction of Wein's fee and expenses, Fant realized only $911.95 of the $3,000 balance of her deposit. El-Amin has not appealed three of the court's four findings in the Fant matter. They are that he violated the following disciplinary rules: (1) DR 9-102(A)(2), which requires that client funds be deposited in an identifiable trust account; (2) DR 9-102(B)(3), which requires that a lawyer maintain complete records of all funds, securities, and other property of a client coming into the possession of the lawyer and render appropriate accounts to his client regarding them; and (3) DR 9-102(B)(4), which requires that an attorney [p]romptly pay or deliver to the client ... funds ... in the possession of the lawyer which such person is entitled to receive. El-Amin contends, however, that the evidence is insufficient to establish, clearly and convincingly, that he violated DR 1-102(A)(3), which proscribes a lawyer's commission of a deliberately wrongful act that reflects adversely on the lawyer's fitness to practice law. We disagree with El-Amin. In our opinion, the evidence that El-Amin cashed Fant's $4,000 retainer check, used the proceeds without earning the fee, and delayed refunding the retainer fee, sufficiently supports the finding that he committed a deliberately wrongful act that reflects adversely on [his] fitness to practice law, in violation of DR 1-102(A)(3). Accordingly, we will affirm the trial court's finding on that issue.