Opinion ID: 2284393
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The spotless record as irrelevant: rigor selectively applied.

Text: In Buckley, the court also effectively held that, even in non-corrupt misappropriation cases, conventional mitigating factors will not justify less severe discipline. The court acknowledged that the ultimate harm suffered by [Buckley's] client was relatively slight, that Buckley had been cooperative and candid during the Board's investigation, [4] and that he had an otherwise clean disciplinary record of thirty years. 535 A.2d at 866. Buckley being a misappropriation case, however, these circumstances were not viewed as providing support for a sanction less severe than disbarment. In In re Reback, 513 A.2d 226 (D.C.1986) (en banc) , the respondent attorneys, seeking to conceal from their client that her divorce complaint had been dismissed by the court because the attorneys had negligently failed to place it at issue, forged the client's signature on a new complaint, secured a notarization of the false signature, and filed a new complaint without advising the client. The client nevertheless learned of these events and discharged the attorneys. Disciplinary proceedings ensued. The Hearing Committee recommended public censure as the appropriate discipline. A majority of the Board proposed suspensions of a year and a day for the senior lawyer and thirty days for the less experienced one. [5] This court, sitting en banc, ordered that each be suspended for six months. Apparently, the sanction of disbarment was not considered, in spite of the patently fraudulent character of the respondents' conduct. In concluding that suspension for as long a period as a year and a day was not necessary, this court cited respondents' contrition, their cooperation with the investigation, the fact that they had returned the client's fee, and the lack of any significant injury to the client. The court placed its greatest emphasis, however, on respondents' status as first offenders: Most important is the fact that both Reback and Parsons have had unblemished records of professional conduct during 30 and 15 years of practice, respectively. This factor weighs heavily in favor of imposing upon them the lightest sanction that will serve the purposes of Bar discipline. Id. at 233 (emphasis added). In my opinion, the respondents in Reback sullied the name of our profession, and more severe discipline might well have been in order. Nevertheless, if one views the case in the context of the purposes of the disciplinary process, the court was surely right in concluding that a respondent's prior record must be given significant consideration. I believe that this holds true generally, at least in those cases in which the underlying violation does not call for automatic disbarment. An attorney who commits a single violation which represents an isolated aberration from the norm of ethical professional conduct is far less likely to be a danger to the public, the court, or to the Bar than a colleague who has a significant record of prior misconduct. From the perspective of moral fitness, the recidivist is uniformly viewed as more culpable, more dangerous, and more deserving of severe sanctions than is the first offender. It may be that an unblemished record, standing alone, ought not to preclude disbarment in a misappropriation case. Perhaps this should be true even where the misappropriation was non-corrupt, although one might reasonably argue for a contrary result. But where, as here, there are significant case-specific mitigating factors, I think that basic fairness requires us to accord considerable weight to Addams' favorable prior record. [6]