Court Opinion

ID: 9478846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:00:26.075467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:39.459968
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in all respects in the result reached by the Court. I would not reach the merits of the issue of the precise limits of Zalman’s duty to disclose the sham nature of the marriages in question because this issue was not properly raised in the court below by objection to the instructions to the jury, or on motion for judgment of acquittal, or otherwise.
It is clear from the record in this case that Zalman must have known that anyone who read the documents submitted would be misled about the nature and legitimacy of the marriages he caused his clients to enter. The failure to disclose the fact that the entire purpose of the marriages was to circumvent the immigration law constituted a fraud. It was a fraud because Zalman knew that, without more, the reader would be misled by the documents. The investigator would assume certain facts and purposes which were not true. The duty to disclose arises because the lawyer knew that the facts as stated, were highly misleading and in context, amounted to fraud.
Zalman cannot now have his conviction reversed, as he seems now to contend, because the District Court did not define precisely for the jury the origin of the duty to *1058disclose, or the reason the law creates such a duty, or its limits. My reading of the record and the briefs of the parties indicates that Zalman never asked for a definition of the duty to disclose, never objected to the instruction on this ground and never claimed that the situation did not raise such a duty. He, therefore, has waived his objection on this ground by his failure to raise it.
Neither do we have plain error here, as Zalman contends, because the failure of the District Court to be more precise “does not affect substantial rights [and therefore] shall be disregarded.” Rule 52(a), Fed.R. Crim.P. The proof was overwhelming, as Judge Krupansky makes clear. Every lawyer knows that he may not participate with his client in the commission of a crime. What is misleading is a matter of context, and the existence of a duty to disclose arises from the situation. Here the lawyer did not overlook the true facts or act negligently because of the press of business. The proof that he deliberately chose to conceal the real facts on the documents is clear. Only if we hold that the lawyer had no duty to be truthful in submitting the documents could we justify setting aside the convictions. To so hold would turn the “plain error” doctrine on its head.