Opinion ID: 1185890
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Brightman Case

Text: Mr. Rudie became a member of the Bar in 1975. According to his testimony before the trial board, during the immediately preceding years Rudie's brother had become a member of an organization known as the Unification Church and broken off contact with his family for an extended period before breaking away from that organization in New York and returning home. As a result of his brother's experiences Rudie developed a strong aversion to the practices of religious cults that recruit young adults for full-time, total immersion in the cult's activities, including group living, travel, and fundraising, and often isolating them from their families and former associates; and he also became interested in the legal problem facing parents who sought ways to break through this isolation. Having learned that lawyers in other states had made use of guardianships or conservatorships for this purpose, he began pursuing this technique in Oregon. In 1979 the accused was retained by Donald Brightman, whose daughter, Lark Brightman, had left her apartment and university and had joined the Unification Church. The father had last seen her at a Portland, Oregon, house belonging to that group, but before the appointed time for a second meeting she had left this house. Mr. Brightman employed a private detective agency, U.S. Protective Service. He asked the accused to proceed with plans to petition for a temporary guardianship of Lark, who was about 23 years old. Upon information suggesting that Lark was with a group at a camp in Clatsop county, the accused decided to file the petition in the circuit court for that county, in Astoria, Oregon. After an ex parte hearing on March 16, 1979, Judge Edison signed an order appointing Donald Brightman the temporary guardian of Lark Brightman for a period of thirty days or until further order. The order further empowered Donald Brightman to take Lark Brightman into his custody to have the Ward counselled, examined, and treated by persons including but not limited to physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and lay persons and to keep her in custody even in the event said Ward wishes to leave said custody. The order set a further hearing for April 10, 1979, when the guardian was ordered to produce the ward in court and the ward was directed to show cause why the guardianship should not be made permanent. The legality of this procedure as such is not before us, and we express no opinion on it. The Bar's complaint stated three charges arising from the proceeding. One charge was that the accused knowingly fabricated and used false evidence in the proceeding. The trial board dismissed this charge for lack of proof, and the Disciplinary Review Board agreed. The Bar does not press this charge in its brief. We find the accused not guilty of this cause of complaint. Two other charges concern the accused' conduct after he obtained the temporary guardianship order for Mr. Brightman. The course of events may be summarized as follows. Upon returning from the court to an Astoria motel, Mr. Rudie found information that Lark Brightman was not in Clatsop county but at a camp near Ocean Park, Washington. He testified that, without attempting to inform or consult Judge Edison, [w]e headed right straight for Washington ... to see if I could catch a judge or some judicial or law enforcement authority in before the business day expired. Rudie had given some attention to the question of the legal status of an Oregon order in that state. That evening, the group, which included Mr. Brightman and two men from the detective agency, Landon and VanMeter, met in Long Beach, Washington, with a group of law enforcement officials to discuss possible action under the Oregon court order in Washington. The following morning the group drove to the camp at Ocean Park in a van belonging to U.S. Protective Service. Upon seeing Lark Brightman enter a mess hall, Landon and VanMeter went after her while Rudie and Brightman waited in the back of the van with the engine running. There is evidence that the private investigators pretended to be police officers arresting Miss Brightman for burglary, and they handcuffed her. While returning with her from the mess hall, Landon and VanMeter got into an altercation with a young member of the Unification Church, later identified as Dominic Gutierrez, who tried to prevent her removal from the camp. The accused testified that Landon pushed Gutierrez to the ground a few times, and he and VanMeter sprayed a Mace-like substance into Gutierrez's face. The group started away from the camp in the van, Landon attempting to drive although partially disabled by some of the spray and by Gutierrez still clinging to his arm and the window of the vehicle, VanMeter steering from the passenger side, and Rudie in the back with the struggling Lark Brightman and her father. Gutierrez succeeded in forcing the van off the road into a ditch. At some point VanMeter threatened Gutierrez with a pistol, and the fight continued in the road, ending to Gutierrez's disadvantage. The men pushed the van back on the road and drove to Long Beach, followed by one or two vehicles occupied by members of the Unification Church. In Long Beach, the Brightman group reported the preceding events to police and sheriff's officers, and so did the group from the Unification Church. Thereafter they were also interviewed by the local prosecuting attorney. The prosecuting attorney and the accused got into an argument about the legality of the Brightman group's actions in Washington State before the Oregon court order was registered in that state, the district attorney threatening to charge Rudie with kidnapping and Rudie asserting that the district attorney would be in trouble for interfering with Brightman's enforcement of the Oregon order. The prosecuting attorney arranged for Lark Brightman to stay overnight at the home of a police matron in Long Beach. According to his testimony, the Washington superior court subsequently agreed informally with his position that the unregistered Oregon order gave the temporary custodian no legal powers in Washington. The accused's role in the foregoing events led to the first and second cause of the Bar's complaint. Leaving aside conclusory allegations, the first cause charged the accused with conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice and specifically with failing and neglecting to uphold the laws of the State of Washington. The second charged that the accused knowingly counseled and participated in illegal conduct in crossing into Washington to execute the Oregon order when the accused knew or in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment should have known that the order was unenforceable in Washington. The trial board found the accused guilty on the first cause of complaint. The board rested this conclusion on the grounds that the accused knew the likelihood of physical resistance and violence in the seizure of Lark Brightman and nevertheless participated in the seizure, and also that by his participation in the events the accused disqualified himself as counsel for Mr. Brightman vis-a-vis his position as a potential witness in the guardianship proceeding. The Disciplinary Review Board rejected this conclusion. It found no disciplinary rule forbidding a lawyer's presence in phases of a professional engagement where physical force and resistance may be expected. On the record before us we agree with the Disciplinary Review Board. Force, resistance, and potential violence can be more or less predictable in situations ranging from everyday law enforcement, through self-help repossessions, to picket lines or civil rights marches. The ethical question hinges not on the lawyer's presence at the scene but on the nature of his advice and conduct. A profession can applaud an assistant attorney general who leads black students through a hostile crowd to a segregated high school without similarly applauding another attorney who personally directs a raid for the forcible capture of an innocent person in the name of law enforcement. But the Bar did not show that this occurred here. Although the violence at the camp was not unexpected, there is no showing that the accused either directed or personally joined in the manner in which the private agents seized Miss Brightman. If he directed or approved improper acts by the agents, his professional responsibility would not depend on his presence or absence. His own testimony is that he went with the group to forestall or deal with legal difficulties in Washington. In itself that is a legitimate purpose. The accused in fact met with Washington law enforcement personnel, including a local city attorney, the night before the seizure at the camp, and he later sought to defend the legality of the group's actions when dealing with the authorities in Long Beach. The crux of the first and second charges thus becomes whether the accused knew or as a competent lawyer should have known that the Oregon order of temporary custodianship had no legal effect in Washington and could not justify the use of force in that state. If this were demonstrated, the precaution of informing the Washington sheriffs and police officers of the intended seizure would be no defense. But the Bar produced no evidence that the accused knew or should have known that an involuntary seizure of Miss Brightman in Washington before the order was registered there would be unauthorized. The accused sought to convince the Washington prosecutor that the Oregon order itself was entitled to full faith and credit in Washington. We state no view on the merits of that position, but the Bar has not shown that it was advanced in pretense or bad faith, or in culpable ignorance. Accordingly, we agree with the Disciplinary Review Board that the Bar's first and second causes of complaint were not proved.