Opinion ID: 2499757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The County Attorney Conference

Text: The statement For Services Rendered Through 8/5/2008 in Disciplinary Administrator's Exhibit 5 does not reflect a county attorney conference. However, four pages deeper into that exhibit, a document labeled PRE-BILL reflects a tentative $300 charge for a 2-hour county attorney conference on August 12, 2008. The date and time in the upper right-hand corner of this PRE-BILL is 10/16/08 and 10:46 AM. The document's second page contains four options that appear to be designed for a billing attorney to check to provide direction to administrative staff. These options read: Fees and Costs [ ]; Fees Only [ ]; Costs Only [ ]; and Don't Bill [ ]. None of these options is checked. Mr. Knox testified, and Respondent confirmed, that such PRE-BILLS were internal firm documents that billing attorneys and sometimes Mr. Knox would review before authorizing final bills to be prepared and sent to clients. This PRE-BILL does not show that Mrs. [H.] was ever billed for the August 12, 2008, county attorney conference or that either or both of them ever paid the tentative $300 charge. And there was no testimony that this particular charge was ever included in a final bill to Mrs. [H.] or paid by her. Paragraph 10 of the complaint and amended complaint filed by the Disciplinary Administrator in this action incorrectly identified the date of the allegedly nonexistent county attorney meeting as February 1, 2008. Respondent's answer did not admit, deny, or state that he lacked sufficient information to respond to Paragraph 10. However, in Paragraph 19 of the complaint and amended complaint, the Disciplinary Administrator alleged: Respondent admits improprieties in his billing records associated with his representation of Mr. and Mrs. [H.] to the extent that he improperly billed for the meeting with the County Attorney. In his answer to the complaint, Respondent admitted the allegations of Paragraph 19. The date of the county attorney conference was amended, without objection, from February 1, 2008, to August 12, 2008, at the opening of the panel hearing. According to Mr. Knox' testimony before the panel, Respondent initially denied any mistake or intentional misrepresentation in the PRE-BILL recording the August 12, 2008, county attorney conference. Mr. Knox testified that he came upon the PRE-BILL as part of his regular review of such documents and that it raised a red flag because the case for Mrs. [H.] was no longer particularly active and 2 hours seemed too long for a county attorney conference. Mr. Knox then called the county attorney, who said he had not talked to Respondent in months. When Mr. Knox confronted Respondent with this information, Respondent said that the August 12, 2008, conference with the county attorney had occurred, that he had not gotten its date wrong in the PRE-BILL, and that he recorded 2 hours of time because it required him to drive from Lawrence to Jefferson County and wait until the county attorney was available to see him. After Mr. Knox told Respondent about Mr. Knox' conversation with the county attorney, Mr. Knox fired Respondent. Respondent's answer to Paragraph 19 of the complaint, i.e., his admission of a billing impropriety regarding the county attorney conference, was inconsistent with his initial version of events, as testified to by Mr. Knox. It was consistent, however, with his informal response to Mr. Knox' report to the Disciplinary Administrator, which stated generally: I must acknowledge that I committed billing improprieties. And Respondent again admitted wrongful conduct during his testimony at the panel hearing: At that time it was one that I saw, and that related to a billing of August 12th I believe. That billing ... had indicated that I had had a meeting with the district attorney of Jefferson County. That meeting did not occur. Now Respondent has again changed his story. He asserts in his exceptions: [T]here was a lack of any evidence that the conference with County Attorney Hayes did not occur. In fact, at the outset of the Final Hearing, the attorney for the disciplinary administrator withdrew allegation No. 10: falsely reported face to face meeting with Jefferson County Prosecutor on February 1, 2008. Respondent also argues that evidence he billed for a nonexistent county attorney conference cannot be clear and convincing because, given Mr. Knox' intervention, Mrs. [H.] never received a final bill. In his brief to this court, Respondent argues that [t]he only evidence that could conceivably support the amended charge is a Pre-Bill dated and generated on October 16, 2008. Respondent's new arguments on the county attorney conference are shockingly disingenuous. After repeatedly admitting impropriety and that the August 12, 2008, county attorney conference did not occur, most recently in his testimony under oath at the panel hearing, Respondent now says there is scant or no evidence to support a KRPC 8.4(c) violation tied to the nonexistent meeting. Respondent also boldly misrepresents what occurred at the outset of his panel hearing, saying the Deputy Disciplinary Administrator withdrew the county attorney conference allegation. The transcript of the hearing could not be clearer: The Deputy Disciplinary Administrator merely amended the date of the fraudulently recorded conference, with no objection from Respondent's counsel. Respondent's essentially legal argument that he cannot be held in violation of 8.4(c) for billing for the nonexistent county attorney conference because the PRE-BILL never made it into final bill form ignores the language of the governing KRPC provision. Although the panel's conclusion did pin the county attorney conference violation to billing of Respondent's client, such a billing was not necessary. KRPC 8.4(c) forbids conduct involving dishonesty, regardless of whether the mark ever learns of the con. Respondent admitted that the county attorney conference for which he recorded 2 hours to be billed to Mrs. [H.] never occurred. The recording of the time reflected in the PRE-BILL was conduct involving dishonesty. It matters not that Knox prevented the lie from reaching its intended target. On this record, we adopt the panel's conclusion that Respondent violated KRPC 8.4(c) in connection with the nonexistent county attorney conference of August 12, 2008. Although Respondent did not ultimately succeed in delivering a fraudulent final bill for that conference to his clients, there is clear and convincing evidence that he had every intention of doing so, that he lied to Mr. Knox when that intention was discovered, that he did not change his story until Mr. Knox reported him to the Disciplinary Administrator, and that he is now more than willing to misrepresent the content of the record on this point to this court.