Court Opinion

ID: 9745198
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:41:10.707491+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:57.512320
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
While I concur that at least a public reprimand is warranted by the misconduct at issue in this case, I would favor a period of suspension. ■
Although I recognize and appreciate the degree of provocation here, the fact remains that the respondent took the law into his own hands. This a lawyer cannot do. Indeed, such behavior is the antithesis of lawyering.
For me, the ease that makes this point most clearly is In re Cholis, 484 N.E.2d 963 (Ind.1985). That case involved two lawyers who had prepared a will for a client. The will made provisions for the client’s daughters from a previous marriage and provided that certain real estate be passed to the client’s widow. However, the will made no provision for the son of the client and his widow. Upon the death of the client, the widow was distraught over the son’s exclusion. At the widow’s request, the lawyers prepared a new page of the will providing that an interest in the real estate which was to have passed in its entirety to the widow would instead pass to the son. The lawyers then affixed the deceased’s initials to the altered page.
We found mitigating value in the facts that the alteration was (i) made to alleviate the widow’s distress over her son’s likely reaction at having been rejected or forgotten by his father, and (ii) did not adversely affect the rights of any others. But we also found that when an attorney appears in court, the court must be able to trust the validity of the instrument offered. We further concluded that the misconduct was grave because the *201respondents’ failure to honor this obligation raised a genuine question as to their integrity. We found that they had breached the trust placed in them by their client and our legal profession and suspended both from the practice of law for ninety days.
Here the misconduct is similar to Cholis but the justification for the alteration is not as benign. Cholis teaches that where a lawyer takes the law into the lawyer’s own hands and alters a document or instrument, even in the presence of mitigating circumstances, a period of suspension is warranted.
SHEPARD, C.J., concurs.