Court Opinion

ID: 9791312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:08:49.767909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.366098
License: Public Domain

Justice VOLLACK
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to suspend the respondent for a *576period of 60 days from the practice of law. In my opinion a more severe penalty is warranted by the respondent’s professional experience, the knowing and intentional character of the respondent’s conduct, and the financial benefit the respondent enjoyed as a result of his unethical behavior.
The respondent was admitted to the practice of law in 1971 in Mississippi. He moved to Colorado in 1983, and was admitted to the bar of this state in 1986. The respondent’s mitigation statement discloses that he had been practicing in Yazoo, Mississippi, for nine years prior to the time he moved to Colorado. In 1987, the respondent agreed to pay Tina Johnson, an inmate of the Pitkin County Jail, a 10-percent referral fee for each inmate of the jail Johnson referred to him as a criminal client. At the time he made the arrangement with Johnson, the respondent was experiencing difficulty establishing a successful civil law practice. The hearing board found that before he entered into the agreement with Johnson, the respondent researched the ethical code and was aware of the ethical prohibition against the conduct which Johnson proposed. The respondent nevertheless entered into the wrongful transactions. After receiving approximately $4,000 in fees from clients referred by Johnson, the respondent delivered $275 in cash to Johnson and, at Johnson’s request, $125 in cash to another prisoner named Thomas Hasty. The hearing board further found that the respondent knew it was improper to deliver cash to inmates of the jail.
The hearing board concluded that the respondent’s conduct violated DR 2-103(B) (“A lawyer shall not compensate or give anything of value to a person or organization to recommend or secure his employment by a client, or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in his employment by a client”), and DR 1-102(A)(1) (violation of a disciplinary rule). The Board also noted that the respondent’s conduct may have violated DR 3-102(A) (a lawyer may not share fees with a nonlaw-yer).
The American Bar Association’s Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions (1986) provides in standard 7.2 that “[s]us-pension is generally appropriate when a lawyer knowingly engages in conduct that is a violation of a duty owed to the profession, and causes injury or potential injury to a client, the public, or the legal system.” The respondent’s conduct is a serious violation of his duty to the profession and the public. I cannot agree that a 60-day suspension is appropriate in this case. Such discipline would unduly depreciate the seriousness of the respondent’s misconduct in the eyes of both the public and the legal profession.
I am authorized to say that Justice ERICKSON joins in this dissent.