Court Opinion

ID: 9767902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:32:58.801685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:34.441637
License: Public Domain

STEAKLEY, Justice
(dissenting).
With respect, I record my dissent to what the Court does today. By judicial fiat, a procedure has been ordained and a jurisdiction has been bestowed that in my view does not find sanction in statute or in rules promulgated by this Court. And this at a time when our stance against professional misconduct should be toughened.
Richard Pena was licensed to practice law by this Court under date of March 24, 1951. Under date of February 13, 1964, Pena petitioned this Court, joined by the Grievance Committee of the State Bar of Texas, to cancel this license. Pena’s prayer was:
“Your applicant is voluntarily resigning and surrendering his license, and permanently withdrawing from the practice of law; and applicant prays that his name be dropped and deleted from the list of persons licensed to practice law in Texas, and that this resignation be accepted and his license cancelled.”
In response, this Court, under date of March 2, 1964, “Ordered . . . that the license of Richard Pena to practice law in the State of Texas be cancelled and that his name be deleted from the list of persons licensed.to practice law in Texas.”
Notwithstanding all of this, the Court has today created a procedure whereunder Pena can overcome in another court his voluntary act of resignation, and the order of this Court he sought. This procedure has been created by the fiction of regarding “this court’s order canceling his license to practice and deleting his name from the list of licensed practitioners as tantamount to an order for disbarment . . . .” This is artificial. A judgment of disbarment is not entered by this Court but by a district court pursuant to Section 28 of the State Bar Rules. Cf. Burns v. State, 129 Tex. 303, 103 S.W.2d 960 (1937). Consistent with this, a petition for reinstatement after disbarment may be filed in the district court pursuant to Section 32 of the State Bar Rules. None of this occurs or is applicable when the holder of a license informs this Court that he is voluntarily resigning and surrendering his license; and upon the representation that he is perma-mently withdrawing from the practice of law, petitions this Court to cancel his existing license. A petition of this nature is within the right of the holder of a license to practice law even though it is filed under the heat of existing or anticipated grievance committee proceedings of the State Bar of Texas. But once done, the act of resignation should be final as to the license surrendered. If not, a convenient way of avoiding public trial and disbarment where a licensee lives and has practiced the profession is made possible. One guilty of professional malfeasance need only quietly resign to this Court and later seek restoration in a district court which did not disbar him in the first instance. I do not think this was the purpose of, or *934should be read into Sections 32 and 33 of the State Bar Rules regulating actual disbarment proceedings.
This Court granted Pena’s petition of resignation and surrender of his license over ten years ago. It must be presumed that he has not practiced law since that time. He now asks this Court for a new license. In my view, his position is no different from that of an original applicant for license. He should be subject to character investigation and to the examination given by the State Board of Law Examiners to establish the competency of a person to practice law in Texas. It has been well said by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin under like circumstances:
“In justice to the public, to the bar, and to Brodson himself, we should not restore to him the right to practice law unless we have reasonable assurance that he is competent to do so. We find no better assurance of that than his successful passage of the examination given by the Board of State Bar Commissioners to applicants for license to practice.” State of Wisconsin v. Brodson, 11 Wis.2d 124, 103 N.W.2d 912 at 915 (1960).
REAVLEY, J., joins in this dissent.