Court Opinion

ID: 9671576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:39:26.603357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:10.685364
License: Public Domain

Petition to Rehear Denied
CARNEY, J.
On July 31, 1963, this court rendered its opinion affirming the action of the lower court enjoining permanently the defendant-petitioner, James T. Sander-son, from the practice of law. On Monday, August 12, 1963, he filed with the Clerk of this court a document entitled “Petition to Rehear and Requested Special Findings of Fact and Law. ’ ’ The appellee, Memphis & Shélby County.Bar Association, Inc., has filed a motion to dismiss the petition to rehear because it was not filed within the ten-day period as provided by Rule 22 of this court.
Apparently petitioner is no longer represented by counsel and the petition was drafted by Mr. Sanderson himself. At a late hour Saturday evening, August 10, 1963, the tenth day. after the announcement of the opinion, the petitioner, Mr. Sanderson, called each member of this court by telephone from Nashville, Tennessee, where he was in the process of preparing the petition and offered to drive from Nashville to Jackson, Tennessee, in what would probably have been a futile effort to get the petition filed with thé Clerk of this court before midnight, August 10, 1963. The petition was filed on the following Monday. In consideration of these and other circumstances, we overrule the motion to dismiss. We have considered the petition and now dispose of it on its merits.
From the opening paragraphs of the petition we quote as follows:
*716“Comes now the Appellant-Petitioner in this cause, James T. Sanderson, and in response to the Opinion of this Honorable Court, hereinbefore filed on July 31, 1963, would respectfully show that he is greatly aggrieved by the general, harsh, .and superficial, but conclusive, findings of the Lower Court, adopted and concurred in by this Court’s Opinion, and therefore, respectfully prays for a rehearing of this cause on its merits; particularly relative to the Court’s findings which embraced questions of law and fact, as well as to findings which are points that necessarily union matters of fact and opinion.
“Confronted with the general, elaborate, unspecific and superficial findings of the Lower Court, adopted by reference and concurred in, apparently, by this Honorable Court, Appellant-Petitioner submits that in his petition to rehear, his position has been reduced to that of attempting to disprove negative findings of fact and law, coupled with inferences unjustifiably drawn on opinion and deduced from undisputed facts; * * *
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“As stated by the Supreme Court of Missouri In Re: Downs, 363 S. W. (2d) p. 679, (Jan. 14, 1963): ‘The power to disbar should be exercised with great caution and disbarment should not be ordered when less severe discipline would accomplish the desired result or where there is reasonable hope of reformation. ’
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“Your Appellant-Petitioner, then, further prays for and requests, special, specific, different and addi*717tional findings of fact and law relative to each, of the nine (9) specifications or charges embraced in the original bill in this canse, as are reflected by the record.”
The petition to rehear contains .87 typewritten pages plus an appendix. It would prolong unduly this opinion and serve no useful purpose to discuss in detail all of the assertions made and the findings of fact requested by the petitioner. The substance of the petition to rehear is a request by the petitioner to find the facts relating to each of the nine charges against him in accordance with the testimony of the petitioner and his witnesses. This, of course, we cannot do. "We have reviewed our former opinion. With reference to some of the charges against Mr. Sanderson we have made some additional findings of fact:
(1) The Woodrow Baldwin case — No additional findings of fact.
(2) The William Newby case — No additional findings of fact.
(3) The Berryman case — The only additional finding of fact in connection with the Berryman case which we deem material is that we find the preponderance of the evidence to be in favor of the testimony of Mr. Strauch and Mr. Byrd that upon their first interview with Mr. Sanderson on September 17, 1958, he told them that he did not feel that he had done anything wrong in giving the girl the name of the abortionist; that he had sent another girl or woman whom he himself had gotten pregnant to this same abortionist. Mr. Sanderson had denied that he made this statement to them.
*718(4) Tlie Tilomas Oren Byrum case — No additional findings of fact. However, we observe that Mr. Sander-son apparently doesn’t understand that he was guilty of unprofessional conduct in failing to acknowledge the letter from Mr. Davis. At the time he received the letter from Mr. Davis on or about September 23, 1958, he had then been in the possession of $400.00 which belonged to his client and uncle, Mr. Byrum, since June 5, 1958. The fact that his client, Mr. Byrum, .had found it necessary to retain another lawyer to collect from him, his own lawyer, the $400.00 should have been most embarrassing to Mr. Sanderson. He should have promptly acknowledged the receipt of the letter from Mr. Davis with a reasonable explanation for his delay in remitting the $400.00 and should have remitted immediately the $400.00 to his former client, Mr. Byrum, through the new attorney, Mr. Davis. Instead, he ignored the letter of Mr. Davis and dealt with his uncle and former client directly.
(5) The Leroy Miller case — We expressly concur in the finding of the lower court that there was nó bonafide loan between Leroy Miller and the petitioner, Mr. Sanderson. The testimony and conduct of the attorney, Mr. Rosenberg in Decatur, Illinois, are much more convincing than the testimony and conduct of the petitioner, Mr. Sanderson, and his former client, Leroy Miller. If Mr. Sanderson had in fact borrowed the money from Leroy Miller, as he testified, on April 14, 1960, then certainly when he received Mr. Rosenberg’s letter of August 26, 1960, making demand for the $600.00, Mr. Sanderson would have communicated immediately with Mr. Rosenberg either by telephone or by letter and explained to him that he had an arrangement with Miller for the loan of the money. Instead, he chose to ignore Mr. Rosenberg’s *719letter just as he ignored his second letter of September 15, 1960, and his third letter of November 16, 1960.
Even though Mr. Bosenberg threatened in his second letter of September 15, 1960, to take the matter up with the local Bar Association, Mr. Sanderson deliberately ignored Mr. Bosenberg’s demands. The petitioner offered no explanation of his failure to reply to Mr. Bosenberg though he received at least three letters from him.
(6) The Inez Martin case — There is a material conflict between the testimony of Mrs. Martin and the testimony of the petitioner, Mr. Sanderson, over one determinative question involved in this charge; that is, whether or not Mrs. Martin agreed for Mr. Sanderson to represent Mr. Martin. Since Mrs.'Martin seemed to be more interested in harassing her husband by litigation than actually obtaining a divorce, it seems improbable that she would have consented for Mr. Sanderson to have represented Mr. Martin in his workmen’s compensation claim. For this reason we find that the preponderance of the evidence is that Mrs. Martin did not agree for Mr. Sander-son to represent her husband, Mr. Martin. Thus we concur in the finding of the Chancellor that Mr. Sanderson was representing conflicting interests. However, we further find that Mrs. Martin was not prejudiced by Mr. Sanderson’s conduct in her right of action for divorce against Mr. Martin.
(7) The "Willie Bobert Cryer case — No additional findings.
(8) The Naylor case — Mr. Sanderson was guilty of gross impropriety in accepting retainer by Mrs. Naylor in a divorce suit against her husband when one of the principal grounds for the divorce was the alleged adultery *720by Mr. Naylor with Mrs. Sanderson. Mr. Sanderson did not think such conduct was improper at the time be took tbe case and Ms argument in the petition to rehear indicates that he still doesn’t see the impropriety of such conduct.
(9) The Moss case — We find that Mr. Sanderson did not withhold payment of the $437.50 alimony and attorneys’ fees from Mr. Duzane because of a purpose to attempt a lump sum settlement, as he testified, but that Mr. Sanderson withheld the funds because he had converted them to his own use. It was not until after he had collected a final fee from Mr. Moss that he offered to pay the $437.50 to Mr. Duzane and it is significant to note that one of the two checks which he gave Mr. Duzane in payment was dishonored by the bank.
We find nothing in the petition to rehear which requires or justifies us in changing our former opinion. It is our unpleasant duty and task to overrule the petition to rehear.
Avery, (P.J.,W.S.), and Bejach, J., concur.