Court Opinion

ID: 9707197
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:04:56.697768+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:28.357026
License: Public Domain

Reiber, C.J.,
¶ 30. concurring in part and dissenting in part. While I concur with parts I and III of the majority opinion and agree that the attorneys violated Rule 4.1, that they should be sanctioned with a private admonition, and that we should establish a joint committee to consider amending the rules, I dissent from part II of the majority’s opinion. In my view, the attorneys also violated Rule 8.4(c) when they lied to a potential witness about *50whether they were recording a telephone conversation. In short, I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that bold-faced lying is not “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” V.R.Pr.C. 8.4(c).
¶ 31. Rule 8.4 provides in relevant part: “It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to . . . (c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” The hearing panel concluded that although there was a “misrepresentation to the witness,” the conduct in question was not “so egregious that it indicates that the lawyer[s] charged lack[] the moral character to practice law.” Accordingly, the panel found no violation of Rule 8.4(c), which it concluded was intended to apply only to such egregious conduct as commingling of client funds, forging fee agreements, or making false statements on attorney-licensing statements. I disagree with the panel’s narrow interpretation of Rule 8.4(c).
¶ 32. Rule 8.4 generally governs “misconduct.” It provides, in pertinent part, as follows:
It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:
(a) violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist or induce another to do so, or do so through the acts of another;
(b) engage in a “serious crime,” defined as illegal conduct involving any felony or involving any lesser crime a necessary element of which involves interference with the administration of justice, false swearing, intentional misrepresentation, fraud, deceit, bribery, extortion, misappropriation, theft, or an attempt or a conspiracy or solicitation of another to commit a “serious crime”;
(c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.
V.R.Pr.C. 8.4.
¶ 33. The rule does not explicitly contain the limit that the hearing panel inferred — that it applies only “to conduct so egregious that it indicates that the lawyer charged lacks the moral character to practice law.” The panel cited several previous Vermont disciplinary rulings in which more serious conduct was found to violate Rule 8.4(c), and the panel relied upon those *51decisions to draw the conclusion that only such serious conduct violates Rule 8.4(c). Upon close inspection, this narrow interpretation is untenable.
¶ 34. The rationale for narrowly construing subsection (c) is, principally, the comment published alongside Rule 8.4. The comment does not explicitly limit its reach to any single subsection of the rule, but its language strongly suggests that it is meant to apply only to subsection (b). The comment reads as follows:
Many kinds of illegal conduct reflect adversely on fitness to practice law, such as offenses involving fraud and the offense of willful failure to file an income tax return. However, some kinds of offense carry no such implication. Traditionally, the distinction was drawn in terms of offenses involving “moral turpitude.” That concept can be construed to include offenses concerning some matters of personal morality, such as adultery and comparable offenses, that have no specific connection to fitness for the practice of law. Although a lawyer is personally answerable to the entire criminal law, a lawyer should be professionally answerable only for offenses that indicate lack of those characteristics relevant to law practice. Offenses involving violence, dishonesty, breach of trust, or serious interference with the administration of justice are in that category. A pattern of repeated offenses, even ones of minor significance when considered separately, can indicate indifference to legal obligation.
V.R.Pr.C. 8.4 cmt. As the opening clause of the comment suggests, it applies directly to subsection (b) only. That subsection concerns illegal acts and prohibits only those acts that involve, among other things, intentional misrepresentation, fraud, or deceit. Subsection (b) is the only subsection of Rule 8.4 that, like the comment, places its focus on illegal conduct. By contrast, subsection (c) concerns all “conduct” without limitation as to legality. The illegality-centered language of the comment strongly suggests that the comment is not meant as a guide to subsection (c) at all. Thus, the hearing panel erred in relying on the comment in support of its conclusion that Rule 8.4(c) should be read narrowly.
¶ 35. The majority opines that Rule 8.4(c) should be construed as prohibiting only “egregious” misrepresentations because to construe it otherwise would render Rules 4.1 and 8.4(c) redundant. *52Ante, ¶¶ 12, 14. It further concludes that because Rule 4.1 already forbids “false statement[s] of material fact” made in “the course of representing a client,” Rule 8.4(c) must be construed as applying only to misrepresentations that are not covered by that rule. See ante, ¶ 14. The conclusion of the majority and of the hearing panel below was derived largely from a law review article that was concerned only with the implications of misrepresentations made by discrimination testers as to their identity and purpose — facts which the article concluded are not “material” and which may, therefore, be falsified without violating Rule 4.1. See D. Isbell & L. Salvi, Ethical Responsibility of Lawyers for Deception by Undercover Investigators and Discrimination Testers: An Analysis of the Provisions Prohibiting Misrepresentation Under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, 8 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 791, 817 (1995). Thus, according to the authors of that article, it would be incongruous to construe Rule 8.4(c) as prohibiting “lesser misrepresentations than those prohibited by Rule 4.1(a) — e.g., those involving less than material misrepresentations — but rather [Rule 8.4(c)] must apply to graver ones.” Id. (emphasis omitted). I find this logic unpersuasive in the context of the Rules of Professional Conduct.
¶ 36. While, as a general matter, it is reasonable to presume that the drafters of rules do not intend to create redundancies, see ante, ¶ 14, the interpretive presumption against redundancy is weaker in the Rules of Professional Conduct than in other contexts. Here, penalties are assessed based not on the number of transgressions, but rather on the totality of the circumstances surrounding the misconduct. See V.R.Pr.C., Scope (“Moreover, the rules presuppose that whether or not discipline should be imposed for a violation, and the severity of a sanction, depend on all the circumstances, such as the willfulness and seriousness of the violation, extenuating factors and whether there have been previous violations.”); In re Karpin, 162 Vt. 163, 173, 647 A.2d 700, 706 (1993) (per curiam) (“[T]he factors to be considered in imposing sanctions are the duty violated, the lawyer’s mental state, the actual or potential injury caused by the lawyer’s misconduct and the existence of aggravating or mitigating factors.” (citation omitted)). The mere fact that a single act may be a violation of two rules does not require us to adopt an interpretation of Rule 8.4(c) that is not supported by the language of the rule.
¶ 37. Regardless of whether the majority is correct to place so much weight on avoiding redundancies here, ante, ¶ 14, the *53majority’s interpretation of Rule 8.4(c) does not avoid surplusage. Rather, the interpretation adopted by the majority today — in holding that Rule 8.4(c) applies only to conduct that “reflects on an attorney’s fitness to practice law,” ante, ¶ 12 — makes Rule 8.4(c) superfluous in light of Rule 8.4(h), which already prohibits “conduct which adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law.”7 Thus, resorting to the interpretive principle of avoiding surplusage does not get us anywhere in determining the proper scope of Rule 8.4(c).
¶ 38. A better interpretive principle to apply here would be to avoid vagueness. Cf., e.g., In re Supreme Court Advisory Comm. on Prof'l Ethics Opinion No. 697, 911 A.2d 51, 59 (N.J. 2006) (noting that “vague[] and ambigu[ous]” provisions “are not appropriate as ethics standards”). As one court has noted, “[i]f attorneys’ violations of ethical rules are to have implications for litigation, as well as their own disciplinary status, the standards against which their conduct is to be measured should be consistent and clear." Miano v. AC & R Adver., Inc., 148 F.R.D. 68, 83 (S.D.N.Y. 1993) (emphasis added). Whether certain conduct “reflects on an attorney’s fitness to practice law,” ante, ¶ 12, is much more vague — and subject to a much wider array of inconsistent applications — than simply determining whether conduct “involv[es] dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” Rule 8.4(c). Rather than reading in something that is not in the rule itself and that only introduces vagueness, I would limit our interpretation of Rule 8.4(c) to its actual language, which is clear on its face.
*54¶39. Although the majority cobbles together some support for the hearing panel’s narrow construction of Rule 8.4(c), most of the existing authority goes the other way and suggests that Rule 8.4(c) is “broad and . . . encompasses conduct both within and outside the realm of the practice of law.” ABA Ctr. for Profl Responsibility, Annotated Model Rules of Professional Conduct 583 (6th ed. 2007). The courts and advisory committees that have considered Rule 8.4(c) in contexts similar to this one have, in the main, concluded that Rule 8.4(c)’s prohibition — or identical provisions of other rules — on “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” prohibits attorneys from affirmatively misleading third parties as to whether a conversation is being recorded. See ABA Comm, on Ethics and Profl Responsibility, Formal Op. 01-422, 1201:101 (2001) (“A lawyer may not, however, . . . falsely represent that a conversation is not being recorded.”); Anderson v. Hale, 159 F. Supp. 2d 1116, 1117 (N.D. Ill. 2001) (recording telephone calls without disclosing as much violates Local Rule 83.58.4(a)(4), which like Rule 8.4(c) prohibits “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentations”); People v. Wallin, 621 P.2d 330, 331 (Colo. 1981) (recording conversation without permission of other party violates provision of Code of Professional Responsibility forbidding, like Rule 8.4(c), conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation); Iowa Supreme Court Bd. of Prof'l Ethics & Conduct v. Plumb, 546 N.W.2d 215, 217 (Iowa 1996) (noting that it “is not the use of recording devices, but the employment of artifice or pretense, that truly poses a threat to the trust which is the bedrock of our professional relationships,” and holding that surreptitious recording for purposes of future litigation against judge was “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation”); Profl Ethics Comm’n of the Me. Bd. of Overseers of the Bar, Op. 168 (1999) (Maine Bar Rule 3.2(f), which parallels Vermont’s Rule 8.4(c), prohibits affirmative misrepresentations about recording, if not recording itself); State Bar of N.M. Ethics Advisory Comm., Formal Ethics Advisory Op. 2005-03 (2005) (provision identical to Rule 8.4(c) precludes “the secret recording of a witness interview by a lawyer ... if such a recording would involve deceiving the witness either by commission or omission”); Okla. Bar Ass’n Ethics Op. 307 (1994) (noting that, although recording is not per se deceptive, Rule 8.4(c) requires that “if inquiry is made regarding tape recording, . . . the lawyer must be candid and truthful”); *55Or. State Bar, Formal Op. 2005-156 (lawyers may record conversations only if “substantive law does not prohibit a recording” and “in the absence of conduct that would affirmatively lead a person to believe that no recording would be made”); Profl Ethics Comm, for the State Bar of Tex., Op. 575 (2006) (same).
¶ 40. The majority is correct that the Supreme Court of Mississippi, in Mississippi Bar v. Attorney ST, 621 So. 2d 229, 233 (Miss. 1993), concluded that misrepresentations about the taping of a conversation with a witness violated Rule 4.1 but not Rule 8.4(c). In that case, however, the court engaged in no independent analysis of Rule 8.4(c) at all, even though the tribunal below had analyzed the conduct under Rule 8.4(c) and not Rule 4.1. No explanation is given in Attorney ST for the court’s decision to find no violation of Rule 8.4(c), and the case, therefore, does not support a narrow reading of that rule merely because it omits any discussion of it. Similarly, the Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board has stated, without consideration or independent analysis of Rule 8.4(c), that misrepresentations about the recording of conversations violate Rule 4.1. See K. Jorgensen, Opinion Barring Secret Recording of Conversations is Repealed, Minnesota Lawyer, June 3, 2002, available at http:// www.courts.state.mn.us/lprb/fc02/fc060302.html. I do not believe that these and similar authorities are enough to support the hearing panel’s narrow reading of Rule 8.4(c), particularly when contrasted with the plain language of the rule itself and all of the authority that go the other way. See supra, ¶ 39 and sources cited therein. Indeed, although the majority claims that a “considerable body of authority” supports its position, ante, ¶ 9, it is telling that the majority ultimately rests upon the “silence” of one court and one ethical opinion that state that certain actions violate Rule 4.1, but say nothing about whether those actions violate Rule 8.4(c). See ante, ¶16. This logic is untenable. Cf., e.g., Rupard v. Astrue, 627 F. Supp. 2d 590, 596 (E.D. Pa. 2009) (holding that when a judge “made no finding one way or the other,” the judge’s “silence cannot be interpreted as a determination” on that issue).
¶41. The majority also goes too far in its statement that a broad interpretation of Rule 8.4(c) would open the door to disciplinary proceedings based on “any untruth told to anyone for any purpose,” ante, ¶ 14, even “giving a false reason for breaking a dinner engagement,” ante, ¶ 12. As the majority itself notes, “the rules are ‘rules of reason.’ ” Ante, ¶ 17 (quoting V.R.Pr.C., *56Scope). In addition, the rules specifically state that “whether or not discipline should be imposed . . . depend[s] on . . . the . . . seriousness of the violation.” V.R.Pr.C., Scope. A broad interpretation of Rule 8.4(c), therefore, would not invite disciplinary proceedings based upon something as trivial as a lawyer’s untruthful statement for missing a dinner engagement.
¶ 42. Although I conclude that respondents violated Rule 8.4(c) in addition to Rule 4.1, I agree with the majority that the sanction imposed by the panel remains appropriate here. See ABA Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions, in ABA Compendium of Professional Responsibility Rules and Standards 421 (2008 ed.) (“The standards thus are not analogous to criminal determinate sentences, but are guidelines which give courts the flexibility to select the appropriate sanction in each particular case of lawyer misconduct.”). My conclusion that the offending conduct violated two rules rather than one would not require the imposition of a more onerous sanction.
¶ 43. I am authorized to state that Justice Dooley joins in this concurrence and dissent.

 Although this problem of surplusage is arguably no longer a worry now that recent amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct have deleted subsection (h), the majority correctly recognizes that those amendments are not applicable to the current proceedings before the Court. Ante, ¶ 5 n.2. Further, because there is no indication that the recent amendments were an attempt to clarify the original meaning of Rule 8.4, see Washington v. Pierce, 2005 VT 125, ¶ 33, 179 Vt. 318, 895 A.2d 173 (recognizing that later clarifications can be helpful in interpreting a statute), the recent amendments should not affect our interpretation of Rule 8.4, see Ins. Co. of Pa. v. Johnson, 2009 VT 92, ¶ 12, 186 Vt. 435, 987 A.2d 276 (citing Coca Cola Bottling Co. of Northampton v. Comm’r of Revenue, 473 N.E.2d 187, 189 n.3 (Mass. 1985), for the proposition that “[w]hat the . . . legislation involved in this case means cannot rationally be influenced by [subsequent] legislation”). If the recent amendments to Rule 8.4 have any significance on the present ease, it is that in amending that rule we did not add any of the language that the majority now reads into Rule 8.4(e).