Court Opinion

ID: 9717330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:01:56.536427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.463210
License: Public Domain

Greaney, J.
(dissenting with whom Wilkins and Abrams, JJ., join). The court’s decision that a public censure is appropriate discipline for the attorney in this case is wrong. In Matter of the Discipline of an Attorney (the “Three Attorneys” case), 392 Mass. 827 (1984), we made clear the considerations that would apply to a lawyer’s misuse of clients’ funds. We said the following (392 Mass, at 835-837):
“The Board of Bar Overseers has placed in the record of those proceedings a statement of policy which it urges in these and similar cases. It is the settled position of the Board that public discipline is always merited in a case of a lawyer who has commingled clients’ funds and the lawyer’s funds and who has then used the commingled funds for his or her own purposes. It is implied *703in the Board’s statement that, in any such case where it is shown, additionally, that there is ‘wrongful intent,’ suspension and disbarment from the practice of law is appropriate, with the extent of the sanction dependent upon the extent of the exacerbating facts ....
“Bar counsel states a position consistent with that of the Board, but he states it even more definitively. He urges that ‘standard’ sanctions should be adopted as follows:
“Intentional commingling of clients’ funds with those of an attorney should be disciplined by private reprimand. Unintentional, careless use of clients’ funds should be disciplined by public censure.
“Intentional use of clients’ funds, with no intent to permanently or temporarily deprive the client, and no actual deprivation, should be punished by a term of suspension of appropriate length.
“Intentional use, with intent to deprive or with actual deprivation, should be disciplined by disbarment or indefinite suspension.
“The views of the court may be stated succinctly. We concur generally in the Board’s and Bar Counsel’s statements of principles ... We do not adopt a posture of mandatory sanctions in such cases, but we do state that an offending attorney, in any case where the misconduct occurs after the date of this opinion, will have a heavy burden to demonstrate to the court that sanctions as recommended here by the Board and Bar Counsel should not be imposed.”
The attorney in this case knowingly and intentionally misappropriated clients’ funds (without an intent to steal) in an amount that exceeded $36,000. He did so long after our pronouncement in the Three Attorneys case. His conduct clearly falls within the category of conduct described above that calls for “a term of suspension of appropriate length.”
The mitigating circumstances cited by the attorney should not change the prescribed sanction. Those circumstances are *704invariably present in one fashion or another in many cases. We have said that the absence of prior misconduct “carries little or no weight,” Matter of Pike, 408 Mass. 740, 745 (1990), and, surely, it is unconvincing to argue that the seriousness of respondent’s action should be palliated by the facts that he may have been under some emotional strain and was inexperienced in office administration. As has been noted, the attorney intentionally used large sums of his client’s money to pay personal and business expenses hoping that his defalcations would not be detected until he had covered his tracks. A plea of “strain” and “inexperience” is a weak response to a duty of strict honesty which is a most basic principle of proper law practice.
That the sanction of suspension will be imposed on a solo practitioner in the attorney’s circumstances also is of no consequence. We cannot sensibly have or apply a rule which excuses solo practitioners from warranted discipline while imposing the same discipline on others who happen to be engaged in group practice. The Three Attorneys case involved solo practitioners, and its message about future misconduct of the type that occurred here makes no differentiation based on the nature of the offending lawyer’s practice. There is good reason for all of this.
“Like many rules governing the behavior of lawyers, [the rule governing client funds] has its roots in the confidence and trust which clients place in their attorneys. Having sought his advice and relying on his expertise, the client entrusts the lawyer with the transaction — including the handling of the client’s funds. Whether it be a real estate closing, the establishment of a trust, the purchase of a business, the investment of funds, the receipt of proceeds of litigation, or any one of a multitude of other situations, it is commonplace that the work of lawyers involves possession of their clients’ funds. That possession is sometimes expedient, occasionally simply customary, but usually essential. Whatever the need may be for the lawyer’s handling of clients’ *705money, the client permits it because he trusts the lawyer.
“It is a trust built on centuries of honesty and faithfulness. Sometimes it is reinforced by personal knowledge of a particular lawyer’s integrity or a firm’s reputation. The underlying faith, however, is in the legal profession, the bar as an institution. No other explanation can account for clients’ customary willingness to entrust their funds to relative strangers simply because they are lawyers.” Matter of Wilson, 81 N.J. 451, 454 (1979).
In this case, there is an admitted pattern of intentional conduct involving misuse of client funds. Rather than attempting to distinguish, in an unconvincing way, several single justice decisions (all of which follow, and are consistent with, the principles of the Three Attorneys case), the court should look only to that decision. Individual Justice’s opinions are not suitable precedent when there exists an opinion of the full court that speaks fully to the matter and was intended to lay it to rest. This court has an obligation to maintain confidence in the bar and consistency in matters of bar discipline. The Three Attorneys case fostered these goals in the awareness that “[i]f public confidence is destroyed, the bench and bar will be crippled institutions.” Matter of Wilson, supra at 461. The court has unnecessarily undermined the clear standards of the Three Attorneys case, and, in the process, has diminished the court’s credibility in an area where the public interest requires steadfast protection of clients’ rights. For the serious misconduct proved, the attorney should be suspended from the practice of law.