Court Opinion

ID: 9754759
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:12:39.653253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:57.416554
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge,
in which HARRELL, Judge, joins.
In 1998, respondent prepared a Will for his client, Ms. Lindinger. At his suggestion, she agreed to make him a residuary legatee, and he included such a provision in the Will that he drafted for her. That legacy is apparently worth nearly $117,000. Ms. Lindinger was not related to respondent, and at no time did respondent advise his client to seek independent legal advice; nor or did she, in fact, have such advice. On these undisputed facts, the Court correctly concludes what respondent has conceded — that he violated Rule 1.8(c) of the Maryland Rules of Professional Conduct. Rule 1.8 deals generally with conflicts of interest and prohibited transactions. Section (c) states:
“A lawyer shall not prepare an instrument giving the lawyer or a person related to the lawyer as parent, child, sibling, or spouse any substantial gift from a client, including a testa- ■ mentary gift, except where:
(1) the client is related to the donee; or
(2) the client is represented by independent counsel in connection with the gift.”
*547This is a simple Rule to follow, and the Court seems to recognize that it is an important Rule to follow. Yet, citing only some Ohio cases, which also carried dissents, in support, the Court eschews the one sanction that, more than any other, will assure that the Rule is followed. It rejects Bar Counsel’s eminently reasonable request that, as a condition to practicing law henceforth, respondent renounce the legacy he wrongfully suggested to his client and included in her Will. With respect, I dissent from that rejection.
Consider what the Court holds: (1) respondent’s defense that he was unaware of the Rule “is no defense at all”; (2) respondent acknowledges that the idea to grant him a portion of the residuary estate was his suggestion; (3) respondent stood, and stands, to gain $116,988 from the estate, “a not insubstantial amount”; (4) respondent knew or should have known that drafting a Will in which he was a named beneficiary “created an obvious and facial conflict of interest,” which he “appeared to recognize”; and (5) respondent “acted with conscious awareness of the nature of his conduct.” The simplest response to this conduct — the most effective response to this conduct — is to say to respondent, if you ever wish to continue to practice law in this State, renounce the legacy you wrongfully created for yourself.
We have said many times that the principal purpose of a sanction is to protect the public, not to punish the errant lawyer. What is it we are trying to protect against? When a lawyer prepares a Will or other dispositional document for a client and, in violation of the Rule, includes himself or herself as a beneficiary, the actual circumstances under which the client agreed to that disposition may never be known. As here, the client often will have died before the matter even comes to light, and, because the client is obviously not available to testily, all evidence regarding the client’s true intent and state of mind will usually then be secondary evidence. If there is a challenge, which there may not be, a presumption of breach of fiduciary duty may arise, but it is a presumption that is often easily rebutted through the testimony of the lawyer and witnesses friendly to the lawyer. There may be no *548one else with personal knowledge of what actually occurred. Meanwhile, as here, the estate is tied up in litigation while one or more courts wrestle with the decedent’s state of mind and whether the lawyer exercised undue influence. The estate cannot be settled until the matter is resolved; legacies are reduced as lawyers’ fees and other litigation and delay costs mount.
All of this can be avoided by the simple expedient of requiring the lawyer, as a minimal sanction for violating the Rule, to disgorge what the lawyer wrongfully created. If lawyers know that a violation of the Rule will bring them no financial gain, they will have no incentive to violate the Rule, and that, above all else, is what will protect the public. In a sense, it is the same basis upon which the courts have fashioned an exclusionary rule for violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Yes, overzealous law enforcement officers who violate citizens’ Constitutional rights may possibly be held liable for civil damages, or even criminally responsible for their conduct in egregious cases, but those kinds of sanctions are not what protects against such intrusions. It is the knowledge that the violation will produce no benefit — that the evidence uncovered by reason of the violation will be unusable. The same approach should be applied here: simply remove from the lawyer the gain achieved by the violation.
I can conceive of situations in which a suspension is not really necessary, where a renunciation of the benefit will suffice, perhaps along with a reprimand. By rejecting renunciation as even a permissible sanction, however, the Court has created for itself a real dilemma — either opt for a suspension, which may be unnecessary and far too drastic in some circumstances, or opt only for a reprimand, which may be entirely too lenient. In choosing between the two, the Court presumably cannot be influenced either by the amount of the potential benefit, for that would create a swamp of inconsistent decisions, or.by the circumstances under which the benefit was created, for the Court seems determined to leave that to collateral litigation. It has removed from its arsenal the one *549sanction that, in my judgment, will nearly always be appropriate.
It is curious that, until this case, we have not seen this situation, yet we now have a second case — a similar situation — pending. I wonder how many other cases are out there that we simply do not see. The Court needs to make a firm and effective statement. It has the opportunity to do so, and, in my judgment, it is wrong in not seizing that opportunity.
Judge HARRELL has authorized me to state that he joins in this dissenting opinion.