Court Opinion

ID: 9760846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:19:27.610467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:18.049057
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON,
concurring in result.
I concur in the result reached by the principal opinion. When this case was initially before the Court, the Court decided that respondent should be suspended from the practice of law. I wrote a dissenting opinion expressing the view that a public reprimand was the appropriate sanction under the circumstances of this case. Judge White concurred in my dissent. The dissent read:
One can hardly disagree with the Court’s conclusion that respondent’s actions violated Rule 4, Rule 8.5(c). Her actions crossed the line from zealous advocacy to border on the contumacious. My disagreement rests on the Court’s answer to the question whether and to what degree this Court should impose the initial sanction against respondent.
The actions that form the basis of the complaint against respondent took place in a federal courtroom over which a federal district judge presided. Despite the fact that the federal courtroom in which these events occurred is in Missouri, the federal court is not a Missouri court over which this Court either claims or covets any supervisory control.
The federal district court for the Western District of Missouri maintains its own bar. It establishes its own continuing legal education requirements. It is an active bar with power to disbar its members who violate the rules of that bar. Thus, the federal district court in Kansas City is no different than the state court in another state for purposes of determining whether this Court ought to exercise its disciplinary responsibility over members of the Missouri Bar who commit ethical breaches while practicing under the authority of another court.
It is true that we have the authority to discipline members of the Missouri Bar for ethical violations whenever they occur. It has been our usual practice, however, to let the court system in which the ethical violation occurred determine the appropriate sanction for ethical breaches. We consider Missouri sanctions on the basis of reciprocity.
That the initial determination of sanction in this case ought to be left to the federal district court for the Western District of Missouri is especially clear in this case. Respondent’s conduct occurred in a federal district courtroom. It was an affront primarily to the honor and dignity of that court. That court system should determine the appropriate sanction. I see no reason for this Court to inject itself into that process initially. Once the federal court determines a sanction, we can consider whether a similar punishment is appropriate affecting respondent’s ability to practice in Missouri courts.
Assuming this Court should determine the sanction as the majority does, I do not agree that a suspension is warranted in this case. Courts have power to protect themselves that lay persons do not. The contempt power exercised by the federal court in this case came swiftly and appropriately. Respondent faced incarceration, a deprivation of liberty of no mean significance. In addition, the federal court imposed a monetary sanction. Given these powers resident in any trial court, I do not believe that a suspension from practice is appropriate absent egregious, continuous, long-standing, habitual and contumacious behavior. I would require more than the two incidents upon which the majority builds its case, given respondent’s practice of law for seventeen years.
Instead, I would publicly reprimand respondent, require her to write a public letter of apology to the trial court, and require her to ask the Kansas City Star and The Daily Record to publish it.
Two members of the majority, Judges Benton and Holstein, filed an opinion that suggested that if respondent would issue a public apology, they would consider changing their votes to impose only a public reprimand. Given that incentive, respondent apologized. Who wouldn’t?
*920I write separately now to express my dismay at the procedures under which the Court has reached its new result. I am not blind to the fact that the sanction the Court now imposes is identical to the one Judge White and I recommended initially — with one significant difference. Judge White and I made the initial judgment that respondent’s conduct warranted a public reprimand. Her failure to apologize might offer grounds for subsequent discipline, but it could not change the gravity of the offense sub judice. Judges Benton and Holstein determined that her conduct warranted a suspension from the practice of law but that some showing of remorse would somehow lessen the severity of her trespass.
In matters of attorney discipline, I believe the Court must weigh the gravity of respondent’s ethical violation as an historic fact and without regard to the possibility that subsequent actions might bear the sweet smell of true remorse. Either the respondent’s conduct warranted suspension or it did not. As Judge Covington’s dissenting opinion so clearly shows, there is enough doubt cast on the motivation for an after-the-sanction apology that it impossible to determine whether the attorney is truly repentant or merely covering a malevolent heart with the cheap perfume of necessity.
Judge Covington’s concerns for our procedures are well stated and entirely proper. Because I believe that a public reprimand is the appropriate sanction in this case, I concur in the result reached. I do so, however, with far more trembling than assurance, hop-mg that both respondent and we have learned something from this.