Court Opinion

ID: 9608338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:10:43.839588+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:45.553203
License: Public Domain

Six, J.
dissenting: Six months’ suspension is the appropriate discipline in this case.
The majority quotes the ABA Standards For Imposing Lawyer Sanctions § 6.12 (1991): “Suspension is generally appropriate when a lawyer knows that false statements or documents are being submitted to the court.”
*1004The majority, in concluding published censure is appropriate, relies on In re Caller, 258 Kan. 250, 899 P.2d 468 (1995). I find a factual distinction in the self-reporting timetables for the respondent and Caller. Here lies an important difference: Caller discussed his professional indiscretion (signing his clients’ name to an affidavit, placing it on his secretary’s desk to notarize, and attaching the affidavit to a brief filed with the court) with the senior members of his firm the evening following his client’s examination in court. He spoke with his client, secured her permission to inform the district judge, and did so during the first break, at trial the following day. We emphasized the factual situation in Caller by noting: “Like the panel, we conclude that the unique facts herein warrant the imposition of a less severe discipline than would normally be imposed for misconduct in these categories.” 258 Kan. at 253.
In contrast, the respondent elected to do nothing for 6 weeks. The bankruptcy court dismissed the petition with the forged signatures on its own motion.
The respondent was not communicating with his clients. The clients had decided they would not seek bankruptcy. He forged his clients’ signatures on a bankruptcy petition and, without their authority, filed the petition.
The respondent was admitted to the bar in April 1991. He took an admission oath. He, among other things, swore never to “consent to the doing of any falsehood in court.” Ride 704 (1996 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 456).
The respondent owes a primary duty to the court. He assumed this duty before he ever had a client. Our court system depends on members of the bar advancing the truth in submissions to the court. No breach of this professional duty is more detrimental to the administration of justice.
The ramifications of the respondent’s actions are: (1) fraud on the court, (2) erosion of the court’s right to rely on the integrity of pleadings, (3) delay to a foreclosing creditor caused by the filing of the falsified petition, and (4) a persistent stain on the credit record of the respondent’s clients. (At oral argument on January 24,1997, almost 3 years after the respondent filed the forged petition, we *1005were informed that the bankruptcy filing remains listed on his clients’ credit reports issued by at least one reporting service.)
The irony of the credit stain is that it results from the respondent’s failure to communicate with his clients, compounded by his wrongful act of filing. We are not dealing with an intended bankraptcy gone wrong, but with a wrong bankruptcy.
I question the majority’s endorsement of the panel’s reliance on youth as a factor to temper a fraud on the court of this type. Youth and inexperience have their place in disciplinary proceedings as mitigating factors, but forging a bankruptcy pleading does not call for application of two codes of conduct, one for young lawyers and another for older ones. Three years of law school and 3 years of practice is adequate to season an attorney on the impropriety of filing forged pleadings.