Court Opinion

ID: 9703591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:01:27.551458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:50.492195
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in the overruling of respondent’s exceptions to Judge Friedman’s conclusion that respondent violated Rule 8.4. With respect, I do most strenuously dissent, however, from the sanction of disbarment imposed by the Court. I agree that respondent’s conduct was not only inappropriate but seriously so. He co-mingled funds and did not keep proper records and, as a result, allowed four overdrafts to occur in what should have been a trust account for client funds. He was also less than candid and forthcoming in response to Bar Counsel’s legitimate requests for information and documentation.
All of that conduct was both wrong and inexcusable. I do not believe, however, that it amounted to the kind of willful misappropriation of client funds or willful defiance of Bar Counsel’s request that was apparent in the cases cited and relied upon by the Court—Attorney Griev. Comm’n v. White, 328 Md. 412, 614 A.2d 955 (1992); Attorney Griev. Comm’n v. Ezrin, 312 Md. 603, 541 A.2d 966 (1988); Bar Ass’n v. Marshall, 269 Md. 510, 307 A.2d 677 (1973); and Attorney Griev. Comm’n v. Owrutsky, 322 Md. 334, 587 A.2d 511 (1991).
The co-mingling of client and attorney funds always creates the potential for misappropriation, even when there is no intent to misappropriate. A misappropriation necessarily occurs whenever the attorney withdraws funds from a co-mingled account for his or her own purpose and, as a result, leaves the account insufficient to cover all client funds, and such a misappropriation is never innocent. It is not necessarily willful, however, or for the conscious purpose of unlawfully taking funds held in trust for another.
In those situations where the misappropriation is willful and is consciously done for an unlawful purpose, disbarment is *232almost always the appropriate response, for the attorney is then, in effect, stealing the client’s money. That is essentially what occurred in the cases cited by the Court. That is not what happened here, however. Disbarment in this setting is not warranted, but is merely punitive, which is not its purpose. Under all of the circumstances apparent here, I believe that an indefinite suspension would be satisfactory.
Chief Judge Bell and Judge Eldridge have authorized me to state that they join in the views expressed in this dissenting opinion.