Opinion ID: 2196073
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Additional Charges Referred to Second Panel

Text: Even though not charged in the complaint as originally filed, the first panel found that Cockrell committed the serious offense of misappropriating his client's funds in violation of DR 9-102. [2] It is because we felt that this appendaged finding was clearly violative of [Maryland] Rule BV3 c as respondent [had] not been charged in the Bar Association's petition with that particular misconduct, Bar Ass'n v. Cockrell, supra at 692-93, that, after disposing of the other procedural objections asserted by the respondent, we granted the petitioner leave to amend though aware of the potential problems with this procedure which In re Ruffalo, supra , might arguably present. The Bar Association amended the petition, alleging additional charges. In pertinent part they read: On or about February 3, 1971, Cockrell negotiated a settlement check of the Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Company on behalf of Mason by endorsing Mason's name on the reverse of said check. Cockrell received $2,500.00 in cash as the proceeds of this settlement check, and either held said proceeds in cash in his law office or mingled said proceeds with his own funds. Cockrell later appropriated a portion of said proceeds to his own use in connection with the settlement of certain accounts between Cockrell and a Dr. James Priest. Cockrell further deposited a portion of said proceeds in an account in Cockrell's name in an Illinois bank. Mason, despite his repeated and persistent requests for his share of said proceeds from or about February 13, 1971, and thereafter, did not receive any part of the proceeds from said settlement check until June 25, 1971.    The conduct of Cockrell in initially failing to place his client's monies in trust or escrow account in a Maryland bank, thereafter depositing and commingling his client's funds with his own in an out-of-state bank, and using his client's funds to settle his own obligation with a physician, constitutes a misappropriation of his client's funds and is a violation of Article 10, § 44, Annotated Code of Maryland (1973 Supp.) and of DR 9-102. The new charges contained in this amendment were considered by a second panel, composed of Judges Joseph L. Carter, Basil A. Thomas and Solomon Baylor. Besides assessing whether they thought Cockrell was guilty of the additional charges, the judges of this second panel were requested, under Bar Ass'n v. Cockrell, supra at 693, to determine whether the decision of the Supreme Court in In re Ruffalo, 390 U.S. 544, 88 S.Ct. 1222, 20 L.Ed.2d 117 (1968), prohibited the new allegations contained in the amended complaint from forming a basis for disciplinary action. In re Ruffalo, supra , involved a review by the United States Supreme Court, on certiorari, of a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit which had disbarred Ruffalo, without a de novo hearing, from the practice of law before that court on the basis of an order of disbarment by the Ohio Supreme Court following proof to that court's satisfaction of Ruffalo's professional misconduct. The accused attorney was found, in the Ohio Supreme Court, to have engaged in misconduct consisting of hiring a railroad car inspector to investigate, during his off-duty hours, Federal Employers' Liability Act claims against the inspector's employer. Ruffalo's objection, in the United States Supreme Court, to this finding of misconduct was that it had not been included in the original charges brought in the state court but was added there through amendment as a result of testimony, which included his own, presented during a hearing on the initial disbarment charges. The United States Supreme Court held that, even though the attorney was granted a continuance in order to have time to prepare a response to the new charge, he was, nevertheless, deprived of procedural due process since the added charge arose from testimony, both his own and that of another witness, given at the hearing on the charges as initially filed, and thus procedurally there was an absence of fair notice as to the reach of the grievance procedure and the precise nature of the charges. In re Ruffalo, supra at 552. A key passage from the Court's opinion in Ruffalo is that which says: The charge must be known before the proceedings commence. They become a trap when, after they are underway, the charges are amended on the basis of testimony of the accused. He can then be given no opportunity to expunge the earlier statements and start afresh. How the charge would have been met had it been originally included in those leveled ... no one knows. In re Ruffalo supra at 551. The holding of Ruffalo, asserted by Cockrell as a block to the proceedings before the second panel, was found by that tribunal (with Judge Baylor dissenting) not to constitute a barrier to its consideration of the amended charges. Having made this decision, the panel conducted a hearing on the amended charges at which the Bar Association reintroduced, in support of these additional allegations, all of the evidence that was before the first panel, including the testimony of the respondent and the chief complaining witness, Mason, as well as some additional corroborative evidence relating to the new charges. Based on this record produced before it, the second panel (with Judge Baylor again dissenting) found that the respondent was guilty of misappropriation in that he failed to place his client's monies in trust or escrow accounts in a Maryland bank; commingled his client's funds with his own; and failed to account over a five (5) month period to Mason for the money collected for him  thus violating DR 9-102(A) and (B). Consequently, the majority on the panel recommended that in view of the gravity of the charges, the name of the Respondent, Paul J. Cockrell, be stricken from the rolls of those authorized to practice law in this State. In reviewing this recommendation, we note initially that if Ruffalo is strictly applied as it literally reads, then its broad holding would have a crippling effect on the primary purpose of disciplinary proceedings, which, as we have held, is not for punishment, but rather [is] a catharsis for the profession and a prophylactic for the public. Maryland St. Bar Ass'n v. Agnew, 271 Md. 543, 549, 318 A.2d 811 (1974); see also Bar Ass'n v. Marshall, supra, 269 Md. at 519. For example, if Ruffalo means in all cases what its words seem to indicate, once an attorney is brought before a disciplinary tribunal for some minor offense he can take the stand and make known every other professional indiscretion (perhaps even those of a more serious nature) he ever perpetrated and, in this way, immunize himself from any potential professional censorship for them because, under Ruffalo, due process would prevent an amendment of the initial allegations. [3] In any event, as we understand the instruction of Ruffalo, we have no alternative here but to conclude that, because of the reintroduction before the second panel of the entire transcript from the first panel's hearing, which includes Cockrell's self-inculpatory testimony, the respondent could no longer be given an opportunity to expunge the earlier statements and start afresh. Therefore, as the second panel received and to at least some extent relied on an evidentiary foundation which, under Ruffalo, must be considered to be tainted, the second panel's recommendation as to Cockrell's misappropriation guilt cannot on the record now before us form the basis for disciplinary action. In coming to this conclusion it is to be understood that our reliance here on Ruffalo is not to be construed as having any import beyond the particular procedural posture that evolved in this case. As a consequence of this ruling, we are constrained to completely disregard the issue of Cockrell's culpability in respect to the new charges set out in the Bar Association's amended petition because they are not sufficiently supported by properly received evidence. Therefore, we confine Cockrell's accountability for professional misconduct to the charges contained in the Petition for Discipline as initially alleged by the Bar Association. Of these, we find, as was stated earlier in this opinion, that the respondent is reprovable for professional misconduct in that he advanced money to his client in violation of DR 5-103(B). Accordingly, we conclude that Paul J. Cockrell should be suspended from the practice of law in this State for a period of six months, accounting from May 1, 1975. It is so ordered.