Opinion ID: 2448503
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Motions And Formal Hearing Before The Area Hearing Committee.

Text: The Bar filed a petition for formal hearing on October 1, 2008. It alleged that Rice had engaged in misconduct under Alaska Rule of Professional Conduct (ARPC) 1.15 by failing to safeguard and account for client funds, and under Alaska Bar Rule 15(a)(4) by failing to respond to Bar Counsel's discovery requests and subpoena. The petition recommended that, based on the American Bar Association Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions, the appropriate sanction for Rice's misconduct was at least suspension. The petition gave notice that the CD Rice mailed to the Bar was broken when it arrived. Rice answered the petition, denying the Bar's allegations of misconduct under ARPC 1.15. In February 2009 the Bar moved for summary judgment on its ARPC 1.15 and Bar Rule 15(a)(4) allegations. Rice did not initially file an opposition to the motion for summary judgment, because, as he later explained, he considered the motion to be premature. The Area Hearing Committee (Hearing Committee) held a pre-hearing conference on March 19, 2009. Shortly afterward, the Bar filed a motion to grant its unopposed motion for summary judgment and to close motion practice. On the same day, Rice filed a motion to reopen discovery, a motion to recuse Bar Counsel on the grounds that he was a witness in the formal hearing, and a motion for additional time to conduct discovery before filing his opposition to summary judgment. The Hearing Committee denied the motions to reopen discovery and recuse Bar Counsel, and ordered Rice to submit his opposition to the Bar's summary judgment motion within five days. Rice opposed the summary judgment motion on May 11, 2009. In his opposition, he claimed that he had provided the Bar with all of the requested information on the CD and was never informed by the Bar (prior to the petition for formal hearing) that the disc had arrived broken. He also argued that the NSF charges, alone, were insufficient grounds for an investigation. The Hearing Committee heard oral argument on the summary judgment motion on May 13. Rice filed motions to quash the Bar's subpoena and for a protective order on May 27. The first motion argued that the subpoena was unnecessary and primarily sought by bar counsel to assist ... in arguing that respondent had not cooperated ... in its investigation. He also claimed that he would have sent a new copy of the CD, allegedly containing the requested information, if Bar Counsel had requested it prior to filing the petition for formal hearing. The second motion requested a protective order to preserve client confidentiality in any records Rice filed with the Bar. Rice also moved to stay the disciplinary hearing until completion of the investigation. The Bar opposed to the motion to quash and filed a qualified non-opposition to the motion for protective order. On June 25, Fred Triem entered his appearance as Rice's attorney and filed a motion to reschedule the hearing that had been set for July 8. The Hearing Committee rescheduled its hearing for August 3, but it did not address Rice's motion to quash the subpoena or his motion for a protective order. On July 2 the Hearing Committee denied summary judgment on the alleged violation of ARPC 1.15, explaining that the committee was handicapped by insufficient information as to ... whether there is a pattern of neglect or misuse and noting that the issue would be ripe for decision after the scheduled evidentiary hearing. But the Hearing Committee granted summary judgment on the allegation that Rice had failed to cooperate with the Bar's investigation in violation of Bar Rule 15(a)(4). Rice produced records in response to the Bar's subpoena on July 2, 2009. The Bar received more records from Rice on July 31, one business day before the August 3 hearing. On the morning of the hearing, Rice submitted hundreds of additional pages of accounting records. Bar Counsel objected at the hearing that the last-minute receipt of these records made it impossible to properly review and investigate them prior to the hearing. The Hearing Committee allowed Rice's documents to be discussed at the hearing, but a further complication was presented by the logistics of the hearing and Rice's last-minute production of documents. The hearing was held in Juneau; Rice and his attorney were in Juneau, but Bar Counsel participated from Anchorage. Rice was apparently aware that Bar Counsel planned to participate by telephone because he had the large additional set of responsive documents delivered to Bar Counsel's Anchorage office. He did not have a set prepared for the Hearing Committee to use in Juneau. Bar Counsel presented the testimony of Deborah Ricker, the Bar discipline investigator/paralegal who had reviewed Rice's accounting records. Ricker testified that the records Rice submitted, while insufficient to form a complete impression, were sufficient to indicate that there might be problems with client trust account management. She pointed to frequent withdrawals from the client trust account to Rice or to his general office account in even amounts and noted that this pattern raised questions about whether Rice was withdrawing unearned fees. Ricker also noted that the Client Trust Liability Register provided by Rice appeared to have been reconstructed after the fact, rather than kept contemporaneously with the recorded transactions. Upon examination by Bar Counsel, Rice acknowledged that he had not sent any information to the Bar between the time the Bar filed its formal petition and the time that Rice's counsel began producing documents on Rice's behalf. Rice expressed surprise at the extent of Bar Counsel's questions, claiming he did not come here prepared to [talk] in detail about all of these hundreds of entries in these client registers. During Bar Counsel's examination of Rice but before Rice's own counsel examined him, the Hearing Committee chair proposed that the hearing be held in abeyance to allow Rice and his attorney to work with Bar Counsel to produce a more complete record of Rice's accounting, after which the parties and committee could reconvene. The Hearing Committee chair described his decision as follows: I would like to order that both sides confer and make good faith efforts to produce a complete set of documentation, and by `complete,' I mean sufficient to enable bar staff to make their own determinations as to the trust violation allegations ... and then report back with full documentation to the committee.... Maybe we won't even need more live hearings at that point; maybe we will; we'd have to confer at that point. The Hearing Committee chair told the parties to report back by August 24, at which point a decision would be made about whether further hearings were needed. At the end of the hearing, Rice's attorney brought up Rice's outstanding motions to quash the Bar's subpoena and for protective order. The Hearing Committee chair responded, At the moment, we're not going to quash anything and we'll maintain the current arrangement we have for maintaining confidentiality (i.e., if documents were released to parties outside the proceedings, all private information would be redacted).