Opinion ID: 2630334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Respondent's statement about court appearance

Text: Applying that standard, we first turn to the finding that Jensen violated various rules by telling Jenkins that his testimony might not be required and that Jensen would contact Jenkins if he needed to appear in court. Jensen denies having said that and, as the dissent pointed out, offered the possible explanation that he may have told Jenkins that Jensen would not be issuing a subpoena. Obviously, a determination of what Jensen said to Jenkins involves assessing credibility which is best done by observing the witnesses. The majority of the panel found Jenkins' testimony to be credible. The dissent found that the evidence was not clear and convincing for two reasons. First, the dissent believes that because Jenkins was not familiar with the legal process and mistakenly believed he was talking to the attorney who issued the subpoena, Jenkins was more likely to have misunderstood what was said about it. The dissent opined that Jenkins' testimony was not clear and convincing, in part because it was not distinctly remembered. The record does not support that conclusion. Jenkins' testimony at the disciplinary hearing was not equivocal. We are not persuaded that his response of It's possible to the question of whether he might have misconstrued Jensen's statement manifests a lapse in memory. The response came during a contentious portion of the hearing during which Jensen's attorney was re-cross-examining Jenkins. In a March 8, 2006, letter to the district judge who presided at the custody hearing, Jenkins detailed the January 18, 2006, conversation that he had with Jensen, specifically stating that [i]n closing the conversation, Mr. Jensen told me that he would contact me later and let me know if my testimony would be required and that I did not need to appear unless I heard from him. Jenkins' disciplinary hearing testimony was consistent with the statement he wrote less than 2 months after the conversation. Further, it is difficult to connect how Jenkins' legal naivete or misidentification of the caller would make it more likely that he would misunderstand what he was being told about physically appearing in court. One would not need a law degree to understand an attorney's statement that it might be unnecessary to go to court and testify. Further, Jenkins' belief that the caller was the attorney who caused the subpoena to issue would simply mean that there would be no need for Jenkins to question the caller's authority to rescind the subpoena's directive. Second, the dissent found Jensen's testimony to be highly credible because [i]t would have been out of character, highly risky, and self defeating for him to make such a statement. The basis for that finding is the dissenter's belief that Jensen, as a lawyer, would have known better than to make such a statement; that Jensen would have known he would get caught if Jenkins failed to appear at the hearing; and that Jensen had no motive to make the statement because he wanted Jenkins to testify at the hearing. We do not find that the dissent's theories counteract the evidence in the record. If one looks at motive, an important consideration is that Jenkins was a disinterested, non-party witness without any personal stake in the litigation, i.e., he had no apparent motive to fabricate the statement about his appearance in court. Moreover, one would expect a person in Jenkins' circumstance to be attuned to any statements that an attorney might relate concerning whether the subpoenaed witness had to expend his time and effort to appear and testify at a court hearing in which he was not personally involved. On the other hand, Jensen's protestations that he had no motive to make the statement because he wanted Jenkins to testify are less convincing in light of the trial judge's disciplinary hearing testimony. The judge opined that Jenkins' testimony was very helpful to Mrs. Duncan and harmful to Anderson's theory of the case. In conclusion, we find that the evidence in this case was sufficient to establish that it was highly probable that Jensen made the statement to Jenkins about appearing in court on the subpoena. Further, that evidence supports the panel's findings of KRPC violations.