Opinion ID: 1462263
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Respondent's Motion to Dismiss the Petition As Defective on Its Face.

Text: Turning next to respondent's argument that the petition should have been dismissed on its face, we also cannot agree with its contentions. Our rules do not provide, nor do we think they must, for cases to be decided on motions made before the hearing. As we said in In the Matter of Erias Hyman, Bar Docket No. 69-79, a hearing committee has no authority to dismiss charges. A hearing committee is to recommend to this Board what disposition should be made of any motions brought by respondent. If the motion requires the taking of evidence, the hearing of that evidence should be consolidated with the hearing on the merits. Recommendations both as to the ultimate disposition on the merits and as to any motions are then made by the hearing committee upon the basis of a fully developed factual record. Once again, the same values are at stake. If this Board's procedures are not to suffer more complication and delay than now attends them, we must be careful not to allow procedural issues and motions practice to distract the Board's attention from the central questions: was there a violation and, if so, what sanction is appropriate. While the fundamental aspects of procedural fairness must be, and we believe are, observed, we must also bear in mind that these are not criminal cases and that the several layers of procedural due process protections that exist in criminal cases are inappropriate in the disciplinary system. Respondent argues strongly that no lawyer should be put to the trouble and inconvenience of a hearing on a petition that is faulty on its face. Respondent's case does not test his argument since no fault appears on the face of the petition that respondent has attacked in this case. However, we feel bound to say that the inconvenience of a hearing before one of our committees is not a reasonable price to pay for the privilege of holding a license to practice law. This is particularly true in light of the fact that charges are brought only after a contact member of a hearing committee concurs with Bar Counsel's probable cause finding. Once a basis of that sort has been laid, then the underlying purposes of the Board require that we proceed directly to a hearing on the merits rather than being detoured into questions of pleading and form. While the Board would have no hesitation in recommending dismissal of a case in which the respondent was not fairly notified of the charges against him because the petition was so inadequate as not to allow him to know with what he was charged, that determination is made at the Board level so that any possible objection to the petition can be considered together with the factual record in the case.