tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35262122765592217562024-03-13T13:48:17.478-07:00kanBARoo courtCritique of the State Bar establishment: how legal ineptitude generates oppressionStephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-43724700676570452652017-03-10T21:36:00.002-08:002017-04-18T12:22:51.284-07:00112th Installment. The Lesson for Ethicists from the Kellyanne Conway Complaint: General “Moral Fitness” is a Misguided Standard<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><b>In
an overreach by academic lawyers</b> that legal ethicists ought to have
anticipated, fifteen law professors have filed a complaint with the District of
Columbia Office of Disciplinary Counsel to sanction Trump-surrogate Kellyanne
Conway for dishonesty for her blatantly false statements. As ethicist Steve
Lubet immediately <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/02/the_misconduct_complaint_against_kellyanne_conway_is_dangerously_misguided.html">recognized</a>,
this was a very bad idea. Impinging on the First Amendment, it would empower
the state bars to leverage disciplinary charges politically. What Lubet did not
address is, under the governing rule 8.4(c), why Conway should not be disbarred.
Rule 8.4(c) says, “It is professional misconduct to engage in conduct involving
dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.” Conway has made statements to
hundreds of millions, such as the falsehood about a “Bowling Green Massacre,”
that would be broadly viewed as dishonest. The law-professors’ bar complaint provides a
fresh perspective on the rules governing moral turpitude, dishonesty, and moral
fitness, showing these standards are generally misguided.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Dishonesty
and moral turpitude are only partly interchangeable standards. Conway’s conduct
would be broadly viewed as dishonest, but whether it is morally turpitudinous
is less clear. Can lying be “honest hyperbole,” as Trump termed it in his deals
book? Closer to the point, is dishonesty always morally turpitudinous when
performed in the service of a higher ideal? Most people find lying justified
under some circumstances, and the D.C. bar expressly exempts agents of the intelligence
services from the ban on dishonesty. Cops, moreover, are allowed to become
lawyers despite their <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2014/11/interlude-28-should-cops-be-permitted.html">dishonesty with the <i>public</i></a>
being a virtual term in their job descriptions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">In
addition to the societal disagreement on <i>what</i>
is morally turpitudinous, there’s no consensus on the severity of ethical
disapprobation that should attach to noncriminal forms of dishonesty, especially
but hardly confined to politics. Are easily recognized blatant lies worse than
lies misleading voters on what policies a candidate intends to pursue, which
usually can’t be known if the politician dissembles? Conway is grossly
mendacious in the first way, but under the second standard, Hillary Clinton (to
take an example) was more mendacious than Trump or Conway. By her own
admission, Clinton stated, speaking to a closed audience of bankers, that views
she expressed publicly were systematically different from her real views. By
the second standard, separate views in public and private is, for a politician,
more mendacious than “alternative facts.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Institution
of an ethics specific to law expresses recognition that the ethics that should
govern legal practice are <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/06/80th-installment-what-happened-to.html">not
the ethics of general morality</a>. David Luban’s error of judging legal ethics
by ordinary morality has its counterpart in subjecting lawyers to legal ethics when
they aren’t engaged in the practice of law. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Extending
legal ethics to cover areas where different ethical prescriptions do and should
reign, or where there’s no societal consensus on what kind of dishonesty
amounts to moral turpitude, promotes state-bar overreach. I’ve previously discussed
the overreach in the Arkansas bar disciplinary proceeding <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/02/one-event-demolished-state-bar.html">against former president Bill Clinton</a>. A recent instance where some ethicists promoted
overreach was criticizing Sally Yates’s insubordination when she, as acting
Attorney General, refused to defend president Trump’s travel ban, justifying
her decision in part on ideological grounds. It is true that federal law
denominates the Attorney General as a “government lawyer,” and the legal ethics
pertaining to government lawyers requires that they follow orders or resign.
But then, if the ethicists are correct, why haven’t they formally complained
against Sally Yates? We may hope that they sense that legal ethics did not
govern whether Yates, in her political position as acting head of the Justice
Department—and not as a lawyer—was responsible to the rules of conduct
designed for lawyers while representing clients or practicing law before a
court.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Bar
and courts impede clarity about the proper domain for applying legal ethics by
insisting that lawyers are professionally answerable for “dishonesty” and “moral
turpitude” only for offenses that indicate lack of those characteristics
relevant to law practice. But the state bars and courts are disingenuous, as
shown by several observations. First, the state bars haven’t rewritten the
dishonesty or moral turpitude standards despite the judicial limitations on
their scope. Second, the supposed connections to legal practice are, without empirical
evidence, based on <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">formal
similarities</a> between types of unethical behavior. Third, neither the state
bars nor the academic ethicists have sponsored empirical studies on which forms
of dishonesty or moral turpitude predict unethical conduct in the practice of
law. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">It
is not necessarily to be expected that Kellyanne Conway would perpetuate fraud
as a lawyer, in the absence of evidence that lying to the public to advance a
political agenda predicts committing fraud on clients or on the courts. Then
why are general dishonesty standards employed? It seems plain that they serve
to convey a public image of lawyers as honest and to counter the public image
that they are crooks. These criteria are not tailored for any screening
process, and legal ethicists should favor abolishing this public showmanship at
cross-purposes with the fair and effective regulation of the profession.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">While
dishonesty and moral-turpitude standards occasionally succeed in excluding
psychopaths from the profession, they don’t accomplish this in a fair and
objective fashion; and in fact, as in the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/12/93rd-installment-now-its-judge-honns.html">Stephen
R. Glass case</a>, the state-bar apparatus has demonstrated its lack of skill
in recognizing psychopaths. Psychopaths aside, as legal ethicist Brad Wendell
has pointed out, the scientific evidence demonstrates the importance
of situational as opposed to trait causes for ethical breaches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">General
dishonesty and moral-turpitude standards, as well as the whole practice of
moral- fitness evaluations, serve the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2014/02/108th-installment-three-strikes-against.html">maintenance of public illusions</a>. The
notion that the state bars “protect the public<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">"</span> by screening the pool
of lawyers is part of this program. Instead of upholding general honesty
standards, legal ethicists should instead express their own <i>intellectual
</i>honesty by admitting that <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/07/65th-installment-state-bars-public.html">state bar discipline is punishment, justifiable only as a deterrent</a>. The state bars should not presume to judge dishonesty outside
the practice of law – for the same reasons the D.C. bar should not hold
Kellyanne Conway in breach of legal ethics for her conduct as Trump publicist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-16518599628099512602016-11-05T17:00:00.000-07:002016-11-06T18:06:05.562-08:00Interlude 30. Pseudo-transparency: From the FBI to the State Bars<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The
ethical implications of the FBI’s presidential-election interference</b> should
embarrass the entire police and prosecutor apparatus, down to the state bars. A
consensus of legal commentators criticized, even condemned, the intrusion,
proving that letting cops and prosecutors announce their investigations and
charges impedes rather than promotes transparency. The license of the police to
selectively release information is a mainstay of their arbitrary power and a
bulwark of authoritarian ideology. Allowing cops and prosecutors to publicize
investigations and charges reinforces the false premise that the mere opinion of
the police should have moral weight. Cops and prosecutors are not disinterested
knowledge seekers. They are ideologically jaundiced and politically
self-interested actors, <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2014/11/250-authorized-police-prevarication-as.html">by nature authoritarian reactionaries</a>. We can expect
that the FBI’s ranks are thoroughly Trumpite—like the police in general.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In
high-profile cases, investigation announcement, wrong on principle, is moot in
practice because, regardless of policy, cops will advance their political
agendas through leaks. The police milieu is beyond reform. More germane is the broadcast of ordinary investigations and charges, as when the state bars
post selective charging information upon issuing a mere Notice of Disciplinary
Charges. We know that the state bar’s information dumps cripple the defense of
charged attorneys, since the posting immediately dooms their prospects of
earning a living at law. Less obvious is that these mundane practices also
broadly undermine a basic civic understanding that investigation and charging
announcements are entirely one-sided. Pseudo-transparency elevates the
unilateral authority of the police and prosecutors. It conditions the public to
accept police pronouncements. It helps create a public mentality where serious
commentators contend that candidates shouldn’t be nominated for office if they’ve
aroused the FBI’s purported suspicions. And on the other side in the presidential
campaign, pseudo-transparency molds a public receptive to the bare
pronouncements of the intelligence agencies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The
state bar’s mundane dumping of charging allegations helps create a public ready
to accept the word of the police agencies, allowing them to influence even
elections. Police (and state Bar) transparency isn’t advanced by encouraging
the public to believe whatever information the police and prosecutors choose to
reveal, this being the whole point of publicizing investigations and charges.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-54964504674528977712015-09-02T23:29:00.002-07:002015-09-27T16:45:41.911-07:00Interlude 29. Journalistic Coverage Suppressed by “California Lawyer”? Don’t let the California State Bar be Done with Dunn!<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>The
California State Bar is using its considerable influence</b> as an agency of the
Supreme Court to suppress discussion of its embarrassing rift with former Executive
Director Joe Dunn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In
early May, prominent legal-affairs reporter Susan Kostal telephoned me on a
story she was commissioned to write for <i>California
Lawyer</i>, which happens to be the largest-circulation legal journal in the
world. I was one of many critics of the California State Bar she would be
interviewing. I talked to her for an hour and referred her to the relevant
parts of <i>kanBARoo court</i>, and she said
she would call back with questions. At the interview’s end, I expressed surprise
that the influence of the State Bar wouldn’t preclude publishing an exploration
of the charges of state-bar “dysfunction,” as revealed by the Joe Dunn scandal.
Ms. Kostal replied that the Supreme Court justices on <i>California Lawyer</i>’s advisory board would be ill-advised to use their
influence to censor journalism; same with Joe Dunn, who is also on the advisory
board. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Four
months hence, I have heard nothing, no article appeared, and the reporter didn’t
respond to my email about the article’s status. I had thought her naïve to
think the article would be published, and I can only assume that the article
was suppressed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Although
the planned article was to be comprehensive, the <a href="http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jan/11/suit-spurs-calls-for-new-lawyer-discipline-model/">Dunn
scandal</a>, which I’ll briefly recapitulate, was at center stage. The state
bar’s Dunn crisis emerged in November 2014 when the State Bar fired him as
executive director. Dunn sued the bar, alleging he was fired because he had
blown the whistle on the Office of Chief Trial Counsel for falsifying statistics
to hide from the Legislature the bar’s quantitative underachievement. (No one
cares about their qualitative underachievement). The state bar claims he had
interfered in the discipline process. (As some ethicists have pointed out, how
else would he know about the falsified statistics?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I know
from <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-14th-installment-turning.html">personal experience</a> that the Office of Chief Trial Counsel is prepared to
commit fraud when there is much less at stake than meeting Legislative demands.
But what is most striking is that Dunn, who as self-appointed point-man for the
Legislature (now practicing personal-injury law and advertising himself as <a href="http://www.thesenatorsfirm.com/Senator-Joseph-Dunn.aspx">“The Senator”</a>) served as executive director for four years, bearing the direct
responsibility for the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/08/90th-installment-behind-james-towery.html">ouster</a> of former Chief Trial Counsel James Towery. That
an opportunistic political hack has led the state-bar bureaucracy reveals that
the anointed moral guardians of the law profession are engaged in a war of
corrupt, power-hungry alliances, the leading actors in the state bar amorally
currying favor with our political and economic elites.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Among
the elites identifiable in the Dunn controversy are the Legislature and the
Supreme Court, who both are fighting an underground war for dominance over the
practice of law. A third faction, the richest law firms, represented on the
Board of Trustees by its elected members, casts the deciding vote. The program
of none of the factions is substantially less fortunate for ordinary lawyers
and the public, the Supreme Court being just as duplicitous as the Legislature,
as by its choice to direct the state bar beneath the public radar rather by
than by honestly reviewing decisions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So, don’t expect, quite yet, that the state-bar
establishment will be promoting public discussion of its crisis. Will lawyers
and legal ethicists let it drop?</span></span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-79563129904460264432015-06-13T22:08:00.000-07:002015-06-16T14:59:25.501-07:00111th Installment. Difficult clients: State-bar sanction as a tool for policing court access <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>The
state-bar establishment being prone to unwitting self-exposure,</b> former Chief
Trial Counsel Scott Drexel </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/03/57th-installment-realism-about.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">once
admitted</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> that technical misappropriation is his main target. A recent blog
posting by Mike Frisch of the District of Columbia enforcement apparatus advises
attorneys about how to “stay out of bar trouble,” and compared even to Drexel’s
admission, </span><a href="http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2015/06/several-years-ago-i-posted-an-article-on-the-ins-and-outs-of-dealing-with-a-bar-complaint-over-at-build-a-solo-practice-llc.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Frisch’s
stunning advice</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> cuts to the essence of state-bar oppression:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Avoid
problem clients</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">.
If the client has wildly unrealistic expectations, wants much [more] justice
than he or she can afford, or has had several prior lawyers all of whom are
liars and cheats, it may be prudent not to get involved. </span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
broadest public access to the courts is a basic democratic imperative. </span><span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>That representing
uncompromising clients is the road to disbarment exposes the state-bar’s
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/07/65th-installment-state-bars-public.html">public-protection hoax</a>, as the state-bar sanctions system serves as an antidemocratic <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/06/80th-installment-what-happened-to.html">screen
</a>to keep unruly parties out of court.</b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Representing difficult clients may be the premier cause of lawyers being disbarred. (Avoiding problem clients was Frisch's premier advice.) Does
Mike Frisch see the implications? Where the risk of bar sanctions depends on
client selection rather than acts of malfeasance, the discipline system is
fundamentally unjust. Since his clients’ predisposition to complain sets the risk
for an attorney’s disbarment, then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">either</i>
charges (and the almost inevitable conviction) are largely trumped up <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or</i> the offending conduct is quasi-universal,
with the issuance of charges tantamount to selective prosecution. How many
attorneys have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> made a
trust-account mistake?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
state bars’ <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/03/98th-installment-california-state-bar.html">fishing-expedition
pleading methods</a> and investigatory practices are designed to guarantee
conviction. Most <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">respondents</i> are
convicted (of something), although most <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">charges</i>
are dismissed with prejudice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">These
practices express the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kanbaroo-court-27th-installment-should.html">mere-appearance-of-impropriety dogma</a>, which I have identified
as the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/08/kanbaroo-court-46th-installment-origins.html">ideological
underpinning of state-bar oppression</a>. The real offense prosecuted is diminishing
the status of the legal profession by eliciting a colorable complaint or representing
unruly parties.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Concern for appearance over substance is a tendency inherent in law, especially
in matters of ethics, but democracy’s depth is measured by rejection of this
hypocrisy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-42419075980918538782014-12-06T13:16:00.001-08:002014-12-06T16:39:32.631-08:00110th Installment. The judicially unconstrained California State Bar: The Marilyn S. Scheer Matter<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>Review
petitions filed by State Bar respondents</b> must be considered by the California
Supreme Court, that being the only form of review by any court of record, as
required by the 5<sup>th</sup> and 14<sup>th</sup> Amendments for deprivation
of a property right. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The California Supreme Court last granted a respondent’s
petition for writ of review 14 years ago. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">If the California Supreme Court fails even
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">consider</i> review petitions, there’s
created a federal question. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Marilyn Scheer has a petition for writ of
certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court and a 1983 action on appeal before the
9<sup>th</sup> Circuit. She </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">argues, among other meritorious contentions, that it defies credibility
that over 14 years and hundreds of petitions, the State Bar Court has committed
not a single reversible error. She concludes that the federal courts should
overturn <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In re Rose</i> (2000) 22 Cal.4th
430, which established<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/03/kanbaroo-court-30c-installment-why.html">
the Supreme Court’s absolute discretion to deny formal review</a>, that process alone compelling the court to issue a written opinion. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">While
the facts overwhelmingly point to the absence of judicial oversight and the deprivation
of federal due process for California State Bar respondents, Scheer’s case is
no assured win. When the California Supreme Court rubber stamps a Review
Department decision by denying a respondent’s petition for writ of review, it
certifies that it has given the petition its conscientious consideration. For
any federal court to conclude that California’s high court hasn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actually</i> even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">considered</i> the rejected petitions is to accuse the justices of
dishonesty. The federal courts will be reluctant to level, for the sake of
California State Bar respondents, an accusation of that moral magnitude against
their California brethren.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Still, Scheer’s
argument, based on 14 years without review, is powerful. Meanwhile, the
California Supreme Court’s position is so facially untenable as to require that
we explain how it got in this legal predicament. Wouldn’t it be worth the
Supreme Court’s time to take at least a single case during the whole 14-year
period following <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In re Rose</i>?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">No, it
probably would not. <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2014/02/108th-installment-three-strikes-against.html">I’ve
shown</a> that in its dealing with the State Bar, the politician judges on
California’s Supreme Court are concerned only with managing the court’s public
image. There’s no good PR in absolving lawyers. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">I’ve
long maintained that the California State Bar is not fundamentally worse than
the state bars throughout America. In the licensing and discipline of lawyers,
there’s no serious policy federalism or even islands of competence.
But in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i> absence of any
judicial review, California stands alone. This must weigh in Scheer’s favor in
federal court.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-78653205039780089832014-11-15T13:20:00.000-08:002014-11-16T10:15:23.210-08:00Interlude 28. Should cops be permitted to join the bar?<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">[Based on <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2014/11/250-authorized-police-prevarication-as.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Authorized police prevarication as a clue to the nature of the state</i></a>.]</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Acts of deceit, including those committed outside of the
practice of law, prove a bar-candidate’s moral unfitness. (The <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">Stephen
R. Glass matter illustrates the point</a>.) How does the state-bar
establishment approach <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">officially
legitimate</i> occupations that require that their practitioners routinely engage
in acts of deceit? A nice theoretical question, you may say, but surely, no
civilized society classifies occupations as “legitimate” when they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">require</i> acts of moral turpitude. It's practically
a self-contradiction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But one occupation is freely permitted entry to the state bars despite having deceit at the core of its real job
description: the police. American
cops enjoy a <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2014/11/250-authorized-police-prevarication-as.html">license to lie </a>both to the public and to suspects, interrogations
included. Not only do they have this license, but their style of work
depends on deceit. No cop can refuse on principle to resort to treachery, even
against random members of the public, if at stake is a potential conviction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Cops will retort that their deceit is socially useful. But
so will many others who commit acts of moral turpitude! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Cops (and former cops) don’t belong in the bar, and their admission is the
ultimate state-bar hypocrisy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-16483273027903908622014-05-02T18:05:00.001-07:002014-05-04T18:23:18.215-07:00109th Installment. How vindictive is the state-bar establishment?—Clues from Indiana’s Ogden matter and the avaricious designs of the California State Bar<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]--><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Previously<span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span>on the <i>Ogden</i> matter:</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><i><span style="color: windowtext; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/10/state-bars-assault-first-amendment-paul.html">104th
Installment</a>. State bars assault the First Amendment: The Paul K. Ogden
Matter in Indiana</span></i></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="Publishwithline">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">New developments
in the <i>Paul Ogden</i> Matter</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
vindictiveness of the state bars is revealed only when lawyers criticize them,
which—due to this very vindictiveness—happens rarely. If lawyers withhold
criticism because <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/10/kanbaroo-court-2nd-installment.html">they fear the State Bars</a>, how can opponents prove the ordinarily
silent constraint on criticism: state-bar retaliation? We must rely on courageous
lawyers like Paul Ogden to take the brunt of state-bar oppression. Even the
original charges against Ogden, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">formally</i>
acts of retaliation on behalf of a corrupt judge, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">substantively</i> were retaliation for Ogden’s public criticism of
Indiana’s Disciplinary Commission (D.C.) when he demonstrated the D.C.’s
big-law bias, the charges having immediately followed the criticism ten months
after Ogden’s (private) criticism of the judge. Recent developments in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ogden</i> matter definitively prove D.C.
retaliation. The D.C. is acting with impunity in pursuing clear vengeance for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">itself</i> by <a href="http://www.ogdenonpolitics.com/2014/04/head-of-disciplinary-commission.html">serving
Ogden with another charge, the illegality blatant</a>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Behind
the new charge is a dramatic story: because of the uncriticizable incompetence
of the Indiana judiciary, a party to a family-law matter suffered 14 bullets. The
victim had asked Ogden to represent her in filing a legal document removing a
family-law court judge, who failed to rule on a motion within Indiana’s
three-month deadline. Ogden couldn’t undertake the prospective client’s representation
because of conflict of interest, this being the same judge who had complained
against him, alleging <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ex parte</i>
communication in Ogden’s already pending D.C. matter. He provided informal
assistance, the “lazy-judge <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">praecipe</i>”
was filed and should have compelled reassignment. However, the scoundrel of a
judge had his clerk delay formal receipt of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">praecipe</i> to pretend to have ruled, and the ruling was harsh and
retaliatory against the woman, encouraging the other party in his murderous
appetites and denying the eventual victim writ protection. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">That
the judge had manipulated the filing times isn’t speculation; even the Indiana
Supreme Court agreed and reassigned the case. But what about the invalid order?
The Indiana Supreme Court completely neglected that issue. Ogden
blogged this, for which he was charged with … disclosing confidential information. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You needn’t be a lawyer, only listen to the daily news, to know that client
wishes govern disclosure, and the severely wounded victim actually confirmed from
her hospital bed that she wanted the case publicized. (See <a href="http://www.in.gov/judiciary/rules/prof_conduct/#_Toc341255454">Indiana Rules
of Professional Conduct, rule 1.6</a>.) Yet, without even confirming them, the
D.C. brought charges for breach of client confidentiality—utterly ridiculous
but, apparently, the best it could manage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">California
implications</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The State
Bars across the country are far more similar than different. Even though
California has distinct rules (which it is moving to conform still more to the
national standard), Bar practices are everywhere much the same. The “laboratory
of the states” is sacrificed, but the uniformity lets lawyers <a href="http://disbarringthecritics.blogspot.com/">generalize across jurisdictional lines</a>, important where dispositive evidence of bar retaliation
is, by nature, hard to acquire. (As I wrote in <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kanbaroo-court-22nd-installment-can-you.html">Installment
22</a>, there was a probable element of retaliation in my Bar case in 2007, but
the evidence is much stronger in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ogden</i>.)
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">California
lawyers should worry more about retaliatory State Bar practices after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ogden</i>. The awareness that the state-bar
establishment is a vindictive claque is particularly important now, since the
California Bar is trying to expand its jurisdiction: it lobbies for the right
to punish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nonmembers</i>—and to retain
the fines it proposes to obtain—for the unauthorized practice of law. (<a href="http://kafkaesq.com/2014/04/24/dan-walters-on-state-bar-power-grab/">HT
Kafkaesq</a>.) The California Bar complains its jurisdiction must expand
because the Justice Department is reluctant to prosecute (what the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bar</i> considers) unlawful practice. For at
least the third time, the California State Bar <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/11/installment-105-humiliated-california.html">fraudulently
asserts the prerogatives of a state agency</a>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
California Bar proposes to apply the same biased fee system, wherein respondent
pays attorney fees if it loses but the Bar never pays anything. This will no
doubt serve as a tool of vengeance against former attorneys incurring the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/06/interlude-11-drexel-and-das.html">sadistic rage that the state-bar establishment harbors</a> for all principled opponents.</span></div>
<br />Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-57796730671993359882014-02-17T21:47:00.000-08:002014-04-25T12:18:10.441-07:00108th Installment. Three strikes against the California Supreme Court: Forsaking standards of candor for the sake of political correctness<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Comparing the cases</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Many
conclusions are obvious from the three January 2014 State Bar cases</b> reviewed by
the California Supreme Court; but they were obvious <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/09/results-are-in-state-bar-court-is-no.html">years ago</a>. Among them: the
Supreme Court doesn’t review cases to reverse convictions, and the Supreme
Court is supremely concerned with managing its status and manipulating its public
image. But some new trends do present, so I won’t belabor the obvious. <b><span style="color: red;">The most
important and unexpected trend is the Supreme Court’s refraining—in each of the
three cases, <i>Garcia</i>, <i>Grant</i>, and <i>Glass</i>—from inferring moral turpitude from deficient candor during
the hearings themselves. </span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A
related trend: the prevalent defense in California State Bar
moral-turpitude matters may seem to be <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/11/84th-installment-inherent.html">“My lawyer said it was OK.”</a> At least that’s
so if we generalize from the three decisions. Although the recipients were, in
all cases, trained lawyers, they, in each, blamed bad legal advice for their
egregious conduct (<i>Glass</i> and <i>Garcia</i>) or false confession (<i>Grant</i>). The court never generalized (or
even noted) the issue of whether lawyers can rely on counsel for their ethics;
how could it, when no consistent policy can be extracted from the results, the
court’s placing considerable weight on the excuse, in one case, and discounting it,
in the others. <b><span style="color: red;">The court’s doctrinal evasion and inconsistency reveals,
nonetheless, a tenacious purpose: increasing its liberty to make political decisions
(without inconvenient ethical considerations) and increasing its opportunity to
issue “politically correct” dicta.</span></b> In each case, the court should have found
moral turpitude based on the candidate or respondent’s conduct in the hearing
process itself. The court refrained from repudiating the lawyer-blame theory, to
avoid either deciding against the candidate (<i>Garcia</i>) or sacrificing opportunity to expound its politicized dicta (<i>Grant</i> and <i>Glass</i>). <span style="color: red;"><b>The court (expressly in <i>Garcia</i>,
tacitly in <i>Grant</i> and <i>Glass</i>), allowed the lawyer-blame defense
to excuse lack of candor. </b></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A
final point for comparing the cases is the inconsistent role of character
witnesses, who are taken very seriously in <i>Garcia</i>
and given no apparent weight in <i>Grant</i>
or (ultimately) in <i>Glass</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>In re Garcia</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The
most flagrant acceptance of the blame-the-lawyer excuse was in <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2014/01/107th-installment-is-being-unlawful.html"><i>Garcia</i></a>, the candidate who is an illegal
immigrant. After living in Mexico for eight years, Garcia returned to the
United States (where he had previously been brought illegally) in search of
employment. Garcia landed the job that got him started toward respectability by
lying about his immigration status, but he avoided the bar-examiners' questions about the job application
by claiming his memory of the events was hazy. (Who could fail to remember obtaining their first employment under conditions of illegality?) He subsequently checked with the former employer
to determine whether a record of the application endured, and on
finding it did, he supplied a copy to his attorney, who advised him to withhold
the information. Two weeks later, Garcia’s attorney had (for reasons unremarked) a change of heart, and he disclosed the evidence. The court should
have denied Garcia admission for this flagrant lack of candor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But
the <i>Garcia</i> case was a political
event, staged by the entire California establishment. <span style="color: red;"><b>If you’re chafing at the bit to give
illegal immigrants citizenship, it’s inconvenient to admit that their unlawful
presence is inconsistent with their practicing the best ethics.</b></span> Garcia was a heavily
networked test case for open-borders jurisprudence; he even had a <i>pro bono</i> lawyer (the one who supposedly
provided the bad advice and who apparently isn’t being targeted for discipline
for advising the candidate to suppress evidence). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><b>By disregarding Garcia's turpitudinous lack of candor as well as ignoring its implications for
the credibility of his other claims, the court could focus on subjective interpretation. </b></span>The opinion apprises readers that the Bar had
conducted a very thorough investigation; then, why hadn't the investigation uncovered
Garcia’s deceitful application? The opinion extols Garcia’s character
references, such as his law professors, who testified to his sterling moral
character; but what does a night-school law professor learn of a student’s
moral character? With a networked candidate like Garcia, character witnesses are
inevitably favorable; they should be discounted accordingly—especially when the court is presented with immediate evidence of the candidate’s lack of candor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>In re Grant</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Before the Supreme Court reversed, the Review Department had found a failure of proof that Grant <i>knew </i>child pornography was saved to his computer, </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">despite Grant's pleading guilty to possessing it knowingly.
Grant explained that he had erred in his plea: he—and his lawyer—had believed that the offended statute equated bare possession with knowing possession. The excuse is
preposterous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The <i>Grant</i> court downplayed Grant’s
disingenuousness because condemning deceptiveness isn’t as opportune as
espousing political correctness. The court expatiated on how possessing child
porn demonstrated moral turpitude, to twist the meaning of that term,
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/08/kanbaroo-court-46th-installment-origins.html">disassociating it from fitness to practice law</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The
court’s arguments, the standard fare on the subject, are worth rehearsing because the court evidently believed saying it important. The court denied that
possessing child porn is a victimless crime because the porn industry (like any
industry) is driven by a market; but being part of an abstract “market” doesn’t
constitute a proximate cause for the production of pornography. The court added
the second standard argument: possessing porn perpetuates the child’s
degradation. This invokes an artificial harm that doesn’t bear on the child’s
actual well-being. <span style="color: red;"><b>To prescribe that the consumer of child porn is guilty of bestowing market share and perpetuating degradation is, essentially, to create a
<a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2011/11/13-worse-than-college-football-itself.html">thought crime</a>: the same logic applies regardless of the existence of a
physical representation.</b></span> If the user trashes the images, should he not be
prosecuted if he doesn’t take measures to forget them? The creation of these
purely mental images is the end goal of the pornography industry, but that
never justifies punishing the mere consumption of information. (Moreover, how
can you ban a practice in a democracy and prohibit citizens from exploring the
object of the ban?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Laws
against <i>consuming</i> images (or texts)
are blatantly unconstitutional. As Justice Brennan wrote in dissent in</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> the case that, regrettably, validated child-porn-possession laws</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">, <i>Osborne v. Ohio</i> (1990) 495 U.S. 103
[quoting <i>Stanley v. Georgia</i> (1969)
394 U.S. 557]: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If the
First Amendment means anything, it means that the State has no business telling
a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he
may watch.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Although
the California Supreme Court’s decision was predictable, to conclude that
possessing child porn is moral turpitude takes a step further than its simple
criminalization. The <i>Osborne</i> court’s mistake
was to apply an ordinary balancing test (rather than a clear-and-present-danger
test) to a core First Amendment right. The California Supreme Court
turned the policy decision into a moral manifesto, one corresponding to the
current politically correct California orthodoxy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Grant
produced character witnesses, all the more impressive because of his own status
as a “registered sex offender”; the court downplayed their significance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>In re Glass</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/12/93rd-installment-now-its-judge-honns.html">Glass</a>,
of course, never had a chance, public image having become the overriding
purpose of character-and-fitness evaluations. From what planet hails an
observer who thinks the Supreme Court will permit the world to joke that Glass
was too dishonest to be a journalist—but is fine as a lawyer? Glass showed remarkable lack of candor about the extent of his cooperation in disclosing his
falsehoods, blaming his failure to make full disclosure on, whom else, his
lawyer. Glass did worse than claim that he delegated to that attorney performance
of his promises about the clean-up effort: he misrepresented his (purported) acts
of delegation as his personal compliance. Glass had also failed to reveal many
of his lies when he applied to the Bar in New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But
denying Glass admission for lack of candor doesn’t appeal to the demagogic
temperament of California’s Supreme Court justices. Why waste an opportunity on
mundane defects of character when there are grave matters of political
incorrectness to denounce? By paying scant regard to Glass’s lies to the court,
the court expanded its opportunity to incite political sentiment. It exposed
Glass as a racist, some of his published lies having put blacks in a disagreeable light! <b><span style="color: red;">The
court again created a thought crime—the objectionable racist motive—with which
it compounds Glass’s bare perfidy to his readers, much in the manner of
hate-crime laws, which are also obviously unconstitutional. </span></b>The court implies
that those with Glass’s <i>views</i> on race
are unfit to practice law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Glass’s
character witnesses had been worshiped by Judge Honn in the Hearing Department,
but they were often disdained by the Supreme Court. (But some of Glass’s
character witnesses were undeservedly respected, such as his psychiatrist, who
offered an optimistic prognosis completely at odds with the evident reality.)
Some of their comments truly discredited these witnesses. A Georgetown University law
professor couldn't grasp the propriety of inquiry into Glass’s having claimed
credit, on his law-school application, for journalistic awards that Glass garnered
by means of fraud; the professor became indignant. But while the fact is
relevant that Glass’s very <i>standing</i>
for bar admission depends on his lies in getting accepted to law school, the point
could also be made (but wasn't) that Garcia, too, got his <i>start</i> through an act of undeniable moral turpitude. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The <i>Glass</i> court refrained from drawing
conclusions about the trustworthiness of orchestrated character references.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion</b></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">In its pretended supervision of the State Bar, the California Supreme Court is concerned only
with its own posturing, now expressed in a strident political correctness, which has become so important to the Supreme Court that, for the sake of its expression, the court will downplay even candidates or respondents' lack of candor, letting their lawyers assume blameless responsibility.</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-71315299238772646592014-01-26T18:59:00.002-08:002014-03-23T13:02:52.726-07:00107th Installment. Is being an unlawful immigrant moral turpitude? — California’s Sergio C. Garcia matter<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-11/facebook-s-zuckerberg-forms-group-to-push-for-immigration-reform.html">Plutocratic</a>
open-borderism contended</b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
only with authoritarian law-and-orderism when California’s supreme court—the
first in the United States—decided to admit an illegal immigrant. (See </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In re Sergio C. Garcia</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> (2014) _ Cal.4</span><sup style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
_.) The Supreme Court parroted the open-immigration line of California’s
economic and political elites; the only opposition, an <i>amicus </i>brief by a former
State Bar prosecutor, </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/08/kanbaroo-court-46b-installment.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">reflexively</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
counterpunched that a lawyer must obey all laws. Both avoided serious ethical
analysis, pandering to politics.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Garcia</i> court’s moral-turpitude analysis of
illegal presence was cursory. The seminal case delimiting the moral-turpitude
standard had exonerated candidate Hallinan of bad moral character by exempting
two categories of alleged wrongdoing: Hallinan had participated in civil
disobedience supporting the civil-rights movement, and he had been in various
physical scrapes. (See <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallinan v.
Committee of Bar Examiners of State Bar</i> (1966) 65 Cal.2d 447.) These
categories correspond to the main instances of serious illegal conduct deemed,
in California and most jurisdictions, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i>
to constitute moral turpitude: disobedience to the law for idealistic reasons
and “intemperate resort to fisticuffs.” (See, also, <i>Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners</i> (1957) 353 U.S. 232.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">To
excusable idealism and volatile conduct, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallinan</i> court contrasted five offenses that always demonstrate
moral turpitude: fraud, perjury, theft, embezzlement, and bribery. Their
commonality is that they bear on “the individual's manifest dishonesty.” The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallinan</i> court had enumerated the five
offenses to provide basis for analogy, but the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Garcia </i>court merely noted that illegal immigration isn’t on the
list, and (having sufficient sense not to analogize to civil-rights activism) the
court analogized Garcia’s illegal presence to Hallinan’s fisticuffs. Had the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Garcia</i> court followed the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallinan</i> court in explicitly
characterizing “fraud, perjury, theft, embezzlement, and bribery” as offenses
involving dishonesty, it could not easily reach its conclusion that illegal
immigration does not constitute moral turpitude. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Garcia</i> court didn’t analytically <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">compare</i> illegal immigration to crimes of
a “fraudulent nature,” on the one hand, or, on the other hand, to idealistic
transgressions or to acts showing “<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">a quarrelsome disposition”
and “a hasty and ungoverned temper.” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallinan</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">supra</i>, at p. 472.) Had it made the
comparison, it would be obvious that illegal presence does not resemble brawling
and does resemble theft: both illegal immigration and theft involve illegal
appropriation of resources. Violating immigration laws isn’t victimless, since these
laws are resource restricting. An example of how immigration laws restrict
resources is afforded by Garcia’s admission that he, at least once, had
obtained employment by misrepresenting his immigration status. (Garcia,
evidently, wasn’t expected to show <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/05/state-bar-review-department-remorseless.html">“remorse”</a>
regarding injury to the applicant who would have gotten the job if Garcia hadn’t
lied.) </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Illegal-immigration’s best analog is tax
evasion. To be guilty, one need not tell express lies. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In re Hallinan</i> (1954) [different
Hallinan] 43 Cal.2d 243 [income-tax evasion with <i>intent </i>to defraud is moral
turpitude].) Like illegal immigration, no one deems tax evasion
victimless despite that the individual victims of the fraud can’t be identified.
Both involve a dishonest failure to satisfy legal obligations, with the motive
that the wrongdoer appropriate resources lawfully belonging to others.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Garcia</i>
court emphasized that illegal presence isn’t itself a crime (as, it also pointed
out, neither was Garcia’s driving without license or insurance coverage). But
the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">Stephen R. Glass matter</a> shows that, just as crimes aren’t necessarily acts of moral
turpitude, acts of moral turpitude aren’t necessarily crimes. </span></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-42249220837998254562013-12-15T11:48:00.000-08:002014-03-28T22:38:47.424-07:00106th Installment. Lawyer dues—not penalties imposed on respondents—should fund disciplinary tribunals<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>California
may be unique</b> in </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/11/installment-105-humiliated-california.html"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">unconstitutionally allowing its
attorney guild to enforce its self-adjudicated costs as a judgment</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">, but the universal state-bar practice
of charging costs to respondents (regardless of how the state bars can collect
them) derives from changes in the criminal law that, despite their legality,
damage the system’s integrity: policies of victim restitution and social
restitution. The critique of social-restitutionary state-bar costs begins with
its prototype, victim restitution in criminal law, of which there has
accumulated much more legal and societal experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Victim restitution in criminal
law<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
award of state-bar “costs” (in most jurisdictions) is sequel to the practice, itself
growing out of victim restitution, of appropriating from criminal defendants an
array of “imaginative fees.” (HT for phrase to <a href="http://www.communityalternatives.org/pdf/financial%20consequences.pdf?">Rosenthal and Weissman</a>, below.) Wildly
popular (despite its hollowness, where only 3% of restitution fines are paid), victim
restitution led inexorably to charging convicted defendants for every manner of administrative
expense (such as their room and board). If the criminal must make
restitution to the designated victim, why shouldn’t he compensate society, too?
Once the policy became acceptable, the rush to solve budgetary shortfalls by
taxing criminal defendants became irresistible. (Former Chief Justice George in
California promoted such fundraising.) The first wave started in the 1970s and culminated
in the 1980s in the widespread use of restitution in an amount apportioned to
the defendant’s means. The second wave occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, when
full restitution widely became mandatory and numerous fees were imposed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">This
was the Reaganite “victims’ rights” movement, which included other
disruptions—such as </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/09/68th-installment-no-to-victim-impact.html"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">victim-plight testimony during sentencing</span></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">—of
reasoned jurisprudence. “Victims’ rights” was largely a sop to victims outraged
by plea bargaining, which flowered in the 1970s after the U.S. Supreme Court, in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Brady v. United States</i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1970), legitimized it. Defendants were to
be charged the costs of their crimes to their victims, who were also allowed to
influence sentencing by diatribe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Restitution
and fees are lauded despite the lack of evidence of their rehabilitative
effectiveness and their scorn for one of criminology’s established principles:
crime is born of poverty. Eighty-five percent of criminal convicts are
indigent. Restitution in criminal law purports to teach the lesson that
criminals are personally responsible for their crimes, whereas, in fact, crime
is fundamentally a product of social conditions. Society cannot teach criminals
to accept rather than deny responsibility when, in the very process of this
attempted indoctrination, society denies its <i>own</i> responsibility for causing crime. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Restitution
expresses and reinforces the ideological denial of poverty’s fundamental role in
crime. The fetishism of “personal responsibility” makes it easy to treat the
primary victims of harsh economic inequalities as if <i>they</i> were the ones who should provide restitution. This ideological
denial helps explain the tolerance of the American public for mass
incarceration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
availability of compensation for the victims of criminal acts is a form of
social insurance. Restitution (3% recovery rate) is insufficient. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">It is
also socially unjust: victim restitution amounts to a highly regressive tax.
This became completely obvious with the 1996 federal law (and similar measures
in most jurisdictions, including Penal Code § 1202.4 in California), which
required judges to order full restitution regardless of the criminal defendant’s
ability to pay, but regressive taxation is inherent in restitution in criminal
law, since the overwhelming majority of criminal defendants are indigent. If
compensation for targets of crime were treated as a social-insurance issue (as
is the European tendency), it would be funded through progressive taxation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
ultra-individualist complexion of victim restitution helps state actors deny
that the development of a sophisticated and nuanced law through courtroom
contests is a public good. The numerous “imaginative fees” that the
restitutionary mentality spawned amount to a tax on the litigation of criminal
allegations. Although “victim rights” was a reaction to universalizing the plea
bargain, it has served as its handmaiden by providing another incentive to
settle criminal cases before the fees accumulate, at the expense of broadening
the corpus of law on which a common-law system depends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The state-bar ramifications of criminal
law’s victim-restitution practices<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
“imaginative fees” that restitution spawned in criminal law have been avidly
adopted by the state bars, which routinely charge investigation, litigation,
and court costs to respondents, including costs pertaining to counts eventuating in
acquittal. These “costs” easily run to thousands of dollars, often to over ten
thousand—a high price for bar counsel and bar-court judges’ incompetent legal
work. They suffer all the demerits of criminal law’s restitution-inspired
measures: denial of systemic causes of infractions, regressive taxation, and
stunted development of law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">While
Bar “costs” are like restitutionary fines in denying the primary role of the
system in engendering offenses—whether crimes or ethics’ infractions—they
differ in manner. The role of system in legal ethics is not so much to cause
infractions but rather to self-servingly define them. (For example, over-prosecuting
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/03/57th-installment-realism-about.html">negligent misappropriation </a>and <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/07/kanbaroo-court-41st-installment.html">violation of court orders</a> while disregarding <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/04/61st-installment-state-bar-for.html">fraud by employers</a> and the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/02/74th-installment-beware-of-court.html">sacrifice of client interests to the judiciary’s interests</a>.) Yet, the direct economic causes of ethical infractions shouldn’t be
entirely ignored; notably, the state bars have failed to bring cases against
law-school administrators who have deceived students about their prospects in law, helping create a cutthroat economic climate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">State Bar
“disciplinary costs” fall as a regressive tax on those least able to pay.
Indigence may not be an important cause of legal-ethics violations, but once
their cases come to issue, many attorneys who face discipline charges are
impoverished. The reason is that the filing of a notice of charges is public
information, which almost invariably cripples a respondent’s law practice. Until
their final hearing, respondents are presumed innocent, yet they are taxed with
costs that deter them from upholding their innocence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Even
more than for criminal law, which has enjoyed a long evolution, the
disincentive to litigate cases stymies the development of bar law. </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/10/kanbaroo-court-2nd-installment.html"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Bar law remains primitive
because of the avoidance of real contention</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">, and bar “costs” are an important mechanism for
enforcing legal blandness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">An
attorney-discipline system (supposedly) serves the entire profession and,
accordingly, should be funded by dues-paying lawyers. As it most serves the most profitable law
firms, an ideal bar would tax its members progressively—and certainly wouldn’t
extort funds from beleaguered state-bar respondents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Facts:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Dickman,
M. </span><a href="http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1112&context=californialawreview"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">"Should crime pay: A
critical assessment of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996."</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> (2009) <i>California Law Review</i>, 97:6(4).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Rosenthal,
A. and Weissman, M. “</span><a href="http://www.communityalternatives.org/pdf/financial%20consequences.pdf?"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Sentencing for dollars: The
financial consequences of a criminal conviction.</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">” (2007)</span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-15488388248905572662013-11-20T15:58:00.001-08:002013-12-10T17:01:51.059-08:00105th Installment. Humiliated California State Bar tries to corrupt the Franchise Tax Board: The search for a sufficiently despicable debt collector<b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Reeling
at </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/06/100th-installment-california-state-bar.html" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">exposure
of its partnership</a></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b> with debt-collection thugs</b> at Wakefield Associates, the
California State Bar now overreaches by trying to fraudulently manipulate tax
collection. Rather than, as before, delegating to </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/07/102nd-installment-prosecutordebt.html" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">gray-market</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
criminals the collection of its <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/96th-installment-challenge-california.html">fake trial, litigation, and investigation costs</a>,
the Bar will ask California’s tax collectors to hand over any
refunds due these respondent “debtors.” This collection method is used for back taxes and judgments owed state agencies
(Gov. Code, § 12419.5), but as the U.S. Supreme Court held, the California
State Bar is </span><i style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">not</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> a government agency
for the purpose of adjudicating members’ federal rights. (</span><i style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Keller v. State Bar of California</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> (1990) 496 U.S. 1, 11.) </span><span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>By treating “costs” as an ordinary judgment
owed California, the State Bar treats its unilateral claims for money owed as a
real court-judgment’s equal, flagrantly violating lawyers’ federal right to due
process.</b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
illegality of the State Bar’s collection methods can be clearly understood from
two legal histories: 1) the changes in methods the Legislature has authorized
for collection of the State Bar’s costs and 2) the State Bar’s previous attempt
to misappropriate the prerogatives of a “government agency.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Before
2004, the State Bar could recover costs from lawyers by only a single means: conditioning
readmission on payment; but with the passage of Business and Professions Code
section 6086.10, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">the State Bar unconstitutionally
acquired the prerogative to enforce its claims through the courts without a
real judgment—without even any process for its lawyer victims to contest the
State Bar’s invoice</span>.</b> Why did these changes wait until 2004? Because there are decisive legal reasons to deny the State Bar use of coercive
collection methods. <span style="color: red;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">To allow the State
Bar to recover based on its own edict is to deny respondent lawyers their due-process right to an impartial tribunal: constitutionally, the State Bar can’t act as both a respondent’s opponent and as adjudicator of cost claims.</b></span> (Nor can this role be filled by
the California Supreme Court, since it functions as the State
Bar’s boss, this role distinguished from its being the state court of
last appeal.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
State Bar’s overreaching raises the same question the U.S. Supreme Court answered
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Keller</i>, a case also illustrating
how distant from the legal mainstream—<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/07/interlude-25-california-supreme-court.html">how
extremist</a>—is the California Supreme Court when it comes to supporting the
State Bar’s goonish methods: in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Keller</i>,
the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the California Supreme Court’s decision <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unanimously</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Keller</i> invalidated the State Bar’s practice of shamelessly using
members’ dues for political propaganda. Political use of tax dollars <i>by state agencies</i> is permitted, and the California Supreme Court had
held that the State Bar was entitled to its political spending because
California law terms it a state agency. (See </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Keller v. State Bar</span></i><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> (1989) 47 Cal.3d 1152 [reversed].)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">This
false characterization was refuted by a three-member minority of California Supreme
Court justices and a unanimous Supreme Court of the United States. <span style="color: red;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The State Bar can be a “government agency” for
some state-law purposes, but when members' federal rights are at issue, it should be
treated as a private club.</b></span> Its most important differences from a “government
agency” are that the State Bar is run, not by the public, but by its members; and
the State Bar is financed, not by taxes, but by members’ dues. Both the U.S.
Supreme Court and the California high-court’s minority analogized the State Bar
to a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">labor union</i>. (I think the
prohibition on political spending is unfortunate as applied to labor unions,
but that’s another question.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Now,
take the labor-union analogy a step further. Imagine that a union tried to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">levy</i> on debt it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unilaterally</i> claimed a union member owed. That’s what the State Bar
(with the State Legislature’s connivance) proposes. <span style="color: red;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A “judgment” for "reasonable costs" issued (as a blank check) by the Supreme Court in its Bar-supervisory
capacity is as unconstitutional as was the State Bar’s political propaganda.</b></span>
</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-3196591655489545122013-11-07T16:10:00.001-08:002014-04-21T12:09:09.779-07:00Interlude 27. California Supreme Court vs. Stephen R. Glass: A tale of competing hypocrisies<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">3rd in the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/search/label/Stephen%20A.%20Glass">Stephen R. Glass series</a>.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>Yesterday,
the California Supreme Court heard oral argument on the case of Stephen Glass; comments
by the justices raise the question:</b> <b>who—Glass or the Supreme Court—is more
self-serving.</b> As <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kanBARoo court</i> <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/12/93rd-installment-now-its-judge-honns.html">confidently
predicted</a>, the court is determined to deny Glass admission, but instead of
using the occasion to uphold the centrality of honesty with <i>clients </i>(and,
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">analogously, with Glass's deceived readership</a>), the justices stressed Glass's
duty to <i>judges</i>. (Source: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Recorder, </i><a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202626775860&kw=Court20No20Ending20Infamous%20Fabulist&et=editorial&bu=The%20Recorder&cn=20131107&src=EMC-Email&pt=News%20Alert&slreturn=20131007132118">“Court
Has No Happy Ending for Infamous Fabulist,”</a> Nov. 6, 2013.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Justice Joyce Kennard:</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> "As
an <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/07/66a-installment-officer-of-court.html">officer of the court</a>, should we believe whatever you tell the court?… A
judge by necessity would sometimes have to rely on the utterances of an officer
of the court."</span> <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
court also used the opportunity to revive the antidemocratic (and </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/11/kanbaroo-court-4th-installment-non.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">perhaps
unconstitutional</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">) tenet that “being admitted to practice law is a privilege.”
(Justice Kathryn Werdeger.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Rarely
do we obtain this glimpse of the justices’ conception of legal ethics as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fundamentally</i> a tool serving judges.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
Supreme Court justices followed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In re Gossage
</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(2000) 23 Cal.4th 1080,</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>which holds that a candidate for
admission who has committed acts of moral turpitude must demonstrate his
rehabilitation by "exemplary conduct." The California Supreme Court indeed
takes seriously its "practicing law is a privilege" authoritarianism:
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gossage</i> court held, "Unlike
in disciplinary proceedings, where the State Bar must show that an already
admitted attorney is unfit to practice law and deserves professional sanction,
the burden rests upon the candidate for admission to prove his own moral
fitness." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gossage</i> matter is
instructive in revealing how the Supreme Court exploits no-brainer cases like the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glass</i> matter to impose a <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/11/kanbaroo-court-53rd-installment-state.html">special moralistic regime</a> on lawyers, with strictures unrelated to the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">core
values of legal ethics</a>. Gossage, even more clearly (if possible) than
Glass, was a psychopath: he was convicted of a brutal voluntary manslaughter; he
forged documents and, over a period of years, engaged in larcenous deceit
of his associates. Like Glass, he lied about his history even as he tried to
demonstrate his reformation.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Yet,
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gossage</i> court took the opportunity
to drag into the case the applicant's Vehicle Code violations, including his
citation for not installing seat belts. The court also complained of his
failure to attend the resulting traffic-court hearings. These infractions don't
relate to ethical failings; the attention they receive reveals the court's sheer class bias (although
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">immediate</i> targets were wealthy
enough): working people in California often must try to evade payment of
traffic tickets.</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glass</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gossage</i> matters both illustrate the California State Bar Court’s legal
superficiality. In each case, the Bar Court was prepared to admit the
applicants, due to its judges' flagrant impressionism. Favoring impressive character
opinions, which psychopaths easily garner, they ignored facts. Also evident is
that <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/12/93rd-installment-now-its-judge-honns.html">Judge Honn, among others</a>, learned nothing from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gossage</i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: red;"><b>The
same State Bar Court that is so impressed by high-status witnesses supporting dishonest applicants will be <i>unimpressed </i>by honest applicants (and respondents) who lack social connections.</b></span> The Supreme Court won't correct those errors, far more numerous. This is the key takeaway from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gossage</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glass</i>
matters.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-9037646299579578972013-10-13T13:34:00.004-07:002014-02-28T17:07:45.152-08:00104th Installment. State bars assault the First Amendment: The Paul K. Ogden Matter in Indiana<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">1. Muzzling lawyers under rule
8.2(a).</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Judges
in Indiana (and in most jurisdictions) are powerful elected public officials,
who you would think are better equipped to defend themselves than are typical libellants.
Then isn’t it curious that the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, adopted
by most jurisdictions (including Indiana), provides:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A
lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with
reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or
integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a
candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office. (Rule 8.2(a)
Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct.)</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Making
statements you know are false (or with reckless disregard for their truth) is
the essence of “moral turpitude,” the term California uses. The version of the
moral-turpitude statute used by the ABA Model Rules (and Indiana’s Rules of
Professional Conduct) is rule 8.4(c), prohibiting lawyers from engaging “in
conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” There’s no
ambiguity in rule 8.4(c) requiring restatement of its prohibition of lying as
it specifically applies to one target. Are lies better when they target an ordinary
citizen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or</i> the President of the
United States than when they target judges? From any angle, this is
preposterous.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
state bars’ justification for this expression of pro-judiciary bias is that “officers
of the court” owe a special duty to help maintain the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kanbaroo-court-27th-installment-should.html">judicial system’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appearance</i></a> of propriety and integrity:
lawyers attacking judges unfairly could erode public confidence in the
judiciary.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Inasmuch
as judges—through the state supreme courts—ultimately control the state bars,
it isn’t remarkable that the rules accord judges special privileges, but imposing
a duty on lawyers to maintain a certain public view of the judiciary is flagrant viewpoint discrimination. The public has the right to form
its own opinion. Judges don’t have a democratic right to stage-manage their
approbation by lawyers!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You
might wonder how repeating a rule in a more specific form strengthens it. Are
judges really provided special protections against defamation by lawyers—or is
the obeisance to judges manifest in rule 8.2 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pro forma</i>? Imposition of discipline is reasonable when a lawyer
defames a judge (or any citizen), but the protection judges enjoy is special
because of the way rule 8.2(a) is interpreted. To show how, I turn to the <a href="http://www.ogdenonpolitics.com/">Paul K. Ogden </a>Matter in Indiana.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2. Vindictive Indiana Disciplinary
Commission recommends Paul K. Ogden's disbarment for well-founded allegations
of corruption.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
Disciplinary Commission of the Indiana Supreme Court <a href="http://www.theindianalawyer.com/commission-recommends-1-year-suspension-for-lawyer-due-to-email-criticism-of-judge/PARAMS/article/32447">wants to suspend Ogden</a> for a
year with no automatic readmission—tantamount to disbarment—for his alleged
violation of rule 8.2(a) in a response e-mail (to an opponent party in a
concluded probate case). Ogden wrote that the judge was dishonest and should be
subject to discipline for his mishandling of the case, its litigation having <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bleak Housed</i> the estate. The recipient informed
the judge, who demanded an apology that Ogden, standing on his First Amendment
rights, refused to tender. The judge complained to the Disciplinary Commission,
which had its own reasons to prosecute Ogden, who had blogged to expose the
Disciplinary Commission’s almost total failure to prosecute lawyers in middle-
and large-sized law firms.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Under the First Amendment, when a party states an opinion that a judge (or any other party) is
dishonest, the statement is not defamatory if the party states the factual grounds. The judge took issue with only two facts. Regarding the
first, Ogden had claimed that the judge was a friend of a probate opponent’s
family and that he had recused himself from another of their matters.
The judge didn’t say this (crucial objective fact) was false, only that he could <i>recall</i> no such recusal;
he denied he was a friend of the family (which is, apart from the recusal, potentially a matter of opinion). Ogden had received this information
from his client, whom he had the right to believe (and who was probably telling
the truth); the court files failed to provide the name of the judge who <i>had</i> been recused. No one knows for sure whether the accusation was true, but
relating what a client has assured the lawyer is true is hardly reckless; more fundamentally,
it hasn’t been shown false.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
judge denied the second factual allegation, which was that the judge had opened
the case unsupervised, pointing out that he assumed the case after it
was already open. But the judge had <i>maintained</i> the case as an unsupervised
probate matter; how it was opened is immaterial. Ogden’s accusation was
substantially true.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3. Rule 8.2(a) affords judges
special protection at the expense of free speech.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
character of the evidence against Ogden shows how judges receive special
protection under rule 8.2(a). If Ogden had been accused of dishonest behavior
under rule 8.4, it would be clear that Ogden had been perfectly honest. He
criticized the judge on terms he reasonably believed were accurate and were
essentially accurate. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
Disciplinary Commission construes rule 8.2(a) not as an anti-turpitude
provision but rather as a judicial shield against criticism. First, the state
bars shift the burden of proof to the respondent. To prove you’re dishonest,
one must prove you a liar; but to prove that you impugned the integrity of a
judge falsely, the absence of contrary proof suffices. Second, the Disciplinary
Commission proves moral turpitude under a subjective standard, whereas the</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> state bars judge recklessness under rule 8.2(a)
relative to what a lawyer “should know,” which isn’t a dishonesty test.</span> You aren’t
dishonest for what you don’t know: prior knowledge or recklessness must be
shown affirmatively. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Because
judges are public figures, the protection from criticism afforded them infringes the First Amendment rights of lawyers. While some jurisdictions place
the burden of proof on the defamation defendant, who must prove truth as an
affirmative defense, the Supreme Court of the United States holds that liability
for defamation of a public figure (such as a judge) must include proof of
falsehood. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Another
requirement for actionable defamation of a public official is the subjective
standard for recklessness. (<i>Times </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">v. Sullivan.</i>) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Other
than the ordinary speech that is any citizen’s right, the issue of regulating
lawyer speech arises mainly in two contexts. Pending litigation, the subject of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gentile v. Nevada</i>, is a special
circumstance; but the recusal-motion context proves the folly in requiring that
a lawyer prove every allegation he makes against a judge’s integrity. When you
consider recusal motions, it becomes obvious that the attorney’s duty to
represent parties is compromised by regulating attorney criticism of judges.
How can an attorney represent a client who is convinced that a judge is corrupt
if the attorney is subject to disbarment when a hearing officer doesn’t find the
allegation substantiated? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.state.in.us/judiciary/opinions/pdf/10081301per.pdf">Matter of
Dixon</a></i> the Indiana Supreme Court tries to weasel out of this
contradiction by adopting a more permissive standard for recusal
motions, appreciating the lawyer’s duty to his client. But allowing exceptions
concedes the whole argument. If lawyers are so influential that the judicial
system can’t tolerate their attacks on judges, why is the system resilient when
the location is a recusal motion, which is of public record (unlike Ogden’s personal
e-mail)? And when the Indiana courts hold that criticism of judges must be
treated more permissively for some motions, it’s implausible that stifling
lawyers’ harsh criticism of judges doesn’t reduce their capacity to represent their
clients in other venues (obvious example, discussion among lawyers that might <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lead</i> to a recusal motion).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">4. Disciplinary Commission charges
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ex parte</i> communication with judge, another
frivolous charge.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
Indiana Disciplinary Commission is troubling Ogden over another matter: he is
charged with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ex parte </i>communication
with a trial judge, although Ogden had no pending cases related to the
communication, which concerned questions of law. Again the Disciplinary
Commission tries to hamstring lawyers. No principle of legal ethics or,
for that matter, no part of the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits communication
with judges about questions of law when no cases are pending. Again, this creates
a special regime for lawyers, inasmuch as an ordinary citizen is allowed to
write to a judge. To ground this charge, the Disciplinary Commission turned to Indiana’s
code of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">judicial</i> ethics, which
commands that judges not receive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ex parte</i>
communication concerning their cases. Whatever this provision means, it does
not forbid lawyers from trying to communicate with a judge about the law like
any ordinary citizen might. If Indiana regulates judicial conduct in strange
ways, it’s not the lawyer’s duty to avoid unwittingly tempting judges astray.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">5. Conclusion.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Transparently,
rule 8.2(a) is the judiciary shielding itself from criticism by
lawyers. The judiciary’s rationalization is that lawyers are especially
influential, but this no way passes muster under the First Amendment. A
judiciary that protects its reputation for integrity by silencing lawyer
critics (such as Ogden) is one that doesn’t deserve a good reputation.
Maintaining a false public image of the judiciary is not a legitimate state
interest under the First Amendment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Rule
8.2(a) is corrupt to the core. Ogden intends to file for <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2009/07/510-against-writ-of-certiorari.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">certiorari</i></a> to the U.S. Supreme Court, but SCOTUS is unlikely to hear
the case; being that the issues are so straightforward under its First Amendment jurisprudence, the Court couldn’t avoid holding for Ogden.
The justices of the Supreme Court are unlikely to break ranks with their state
brethren on an issue that, as collateral effect, would decrease judges' status.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-66587548754786157632013-09-12T12:42:00.001-07:002014-01-18T10:54:54.009-08:00103rd Installment. California State Bar: Toady to the foreclosing banks <b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The California
State Bar is extending its helping hand to the banks—not protecting consumers</b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">—by
</span><a href="http://www.ethics-lawyer.com/kafkaesq/?p=257" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">making it impossible</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
for homeowners to retain a lawyer to resist foreclosure. The State Bar
intervened in the mortgage crisis under new bank-instigated legislation (October
2009) making it illegal for lawyers to charge for mortgage-relief services until
</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">all</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> contracted services had been
completed. (Civ. Code, § 2944.7; Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6106.3.) The law
itself has been enthusiastically promoted by the State Bar, which vociferously reported
that in each of two years consumer complaints had risen from 1,000 to over
3,000.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s the fault of the State Bar—even </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">more </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">than the fault of
the Legislature—that foreclosed homeowners can’t get lawyers, for these reasons: the State Bar
failed to defend lawyers from unjust accusations and instead helped inflame
anti-lawyer sentiment; the State Bar failed to use its discretion to enforce
parts of the legislation; and the State Bar denied the law’s ambiguity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1. The State Bar failed to defend
California lawyers against slurs.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The State Bar publicly
bewailed the extra consumer complaints and demonized the lawyers complained
against, but the number convicted were a small percentage of complaints. It shrunk
from the conclusion that the number of complaints </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">mainly</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> resulted not from the greed of lawyers but from the desperation
of struggling homeowners. In desperate circumstances, some homeowners used
threats of State Bar complaint as extortion against lawyers, a problem the
State Bar never addresses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2. The State Bar self-servingly abused
its discretion to prosecute.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The State Bar
recognizes its discretion to refrain from enforcing parts of the law, having
closed all cases involving payment schedules while it had a backlog, prosecuting
similar cases only when the backlog was resolved. The bar had better reasons to refrain from these prosecutions than the self-serving reduction of its backlog. First,
legal precedent favored it, as the
Bar had previously argued and a U.S. District Court held that the legislation doesn’t
apply to all litigation. Second, bundling violations don’t constitute
a violation of legal ethics but rather a violation of an administrative rule.
The Legislature gave the Bar jurisdiction to discipline violations of the bundling
provisions, but it also subjected violators to criminal penalties. Such
technical prosecutions should be left to the criminal courts; they <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/09/profession-must-rethink-ethics-scope.html">don’t bear on the lawyer’s ethical character</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3. The State Bar denied the law’s
ambiguity.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In its published
case law, the State Bar Review Department denied that the law was
ambiguous—despite the contradicting interpretation the state bar’s chief prosecutor
had himself urged in federal court and despite the law's patent ambiguity.
(</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the Matter of Swazi Taylor</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> (2012
WL 5489045); the federal district court case is </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Duenas v. Brown</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> [unreported].)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The law isn’t
clear because the meaning of “each and every service the person contracted to
perform or represented that he or she would perform” is ambiguous. (Civ. Code, §
2944.7, subd. (a)(1).) It does not unambiguously state that “unbundling”
matters into </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">separate</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> contracts is
illegal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Conclusion</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Only the banks
benefit from preventing foreclosed homeowners from getting lawyers. Apart
from the State Bar’s incompetence and the courts’ pro-bank favoritism (often
eliminating every consideration other than “did you pay?”), there is the background
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/05/kanbaroo-court-37th-installment.html">moralistic bigotry</a> of the whole national state-bar establishment <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/07/interlude-11-state-bar-establishment.html">against debtors</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">kanBARoo court predicted</b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> the state bars would prevent lawyers from
representing debtors against the banks, in </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/07/interlude-11-state-bar-establishment.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">State
Bar Establishment: Pro Bono for the Banks</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As the economic
depression deepens so does political oppression, as the police are the
instrument forcing an adverse orderliness on the enraged and impoverished. When
banks today mount a collections' offensive against the public that financed
their rescue, what role will lawyers play in helping the poor and indebted
resist the onslaught? None if the state bars, specialized branches of the
police-prosecutor apparatus, have their way. In three jurisdictions, the state
bars have already disbarred or denied admission to lawyers for carrying
excessive debt. For the state bars, indebtedness is moral turpitude!</span></div>
</blockquote>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-31792037185939116652013-07-06T00:46:00.000-07:002014-03-06T12:04:42.755-08:00102nd Installment. The prosecutor/debt-collector complex<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/06/100th-installment-california-state-bar.html" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Installment
100</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, on California State Bar collusion with debt-collection thugs,
concluded with this comment about its debt collector, Wakefield Associates:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Some
other corrupt judicial organs must use Wakefield Associates’ services, and they
succeed in deceiving the legally naïve into fearing that criminal justice is
their pursuer. The business model of these gray-market criminals is otherwise
inexplicable.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">What
an understatement! As I only recently discovered, the <i>New York Times</i> broke the
scandal last January (reported online by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.westword.com/2013-01-24/news/debt-collection-is-big-business/">Westword</a></i>,
“In 2013, debt collection is big business—really big,” by Denise Grollmus):
district attorneys in more than 300 jurisdictions, including Los Angeles and
New York, have privatized debt-collection prosecutions by farming out
their<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>power to punish writing bad
checks.</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Under
contract with the district attorneys, illegal collection syndicates
threaten citizens who’ve written a bad check—usually caused by ordinary
carelessness and thus subject to only small civil penalties—with criminal prosecution
if they don't pay to attend special financial-management classes run by the collector,
who profits handsomely. The threats of prosecution are almost
always empty, pure harassment, as the proportion of uncooperative threat
recipients actually prosecuted by the DA is minuscule.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">DAs
contracting with these collection thugs commit disciplinable ethics' infractions
that the state bars refuse to discipline: aiding and abetting the practice of
law by nonlawyers and harassment. The DAs aid and abet illegal law practice
because they even allow the collectors to use the official letterhead of the
DAs' offices to issue their threats, and in practice, they even allow the
collector to determine probable cause. (Credit to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://ethicsalarms.com/2012/09/18/prosecutor-prosecute-thyself/">Ethics
Alarms</a></i>, “Prosecutor prosecute thyself,” on the illegal practice of law.)
The DAs knowingly contract for the thugs to harass citizens. In California, Los
Angeles and Riverside DAs employ Corrective Solutions, whose CEO, Mike Wilhelms,
has made himself judgment proof by repeatedly declaring<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bankruptcy and starting another collection
racquet after losing lawsuits for harassment and unfair business practices under
the Fair Debt Collection Act. (What irony!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most ethics codes proscribe harassment; in California, it falls
under moral turpitude.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">In <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/12/85th-installment-california-state-bar.html">Installment
85</a>, I concluded that the California State Bar refrains from prosecuting prosecutorial misconduct because state-bar prosecutors </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">themselves </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">engage in rampant
misconduct. There are additional <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>motives; for example, trial counsels'
ambitions to graduate to become real prosecutors. State-bar prosecutors often
aspire to be real prosecutors, and what chance would they have after
prosecuting them? I discovered from the pattern of views on this blog that <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/05/interlude-26-at-aba-conference.html">Melanie
J. Lawrence</a> is applying for a job with the DA's office in Brooklyn, New
York, where she is licensed to practice. No doubt she scored points by denying
the existence of prosecutorial misconduct, at conferences. <b>But the big reason
the California State Bar won't interfere with the with district attorneys’ outrageously
illegal privatization of enforcement is that the California State Bar is up to
its neck in gray-market crime with the collection thugs at <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/06/100th-installment-california-state-bar.html">Wakefield
Associates</a>.</b></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-43675528551895385412013-06-26T13:54:00.001-07:002014-01-01T10:01:03.900-08:00101st Installment. Cases as secrets: A reply to Professor Richard Zitrin<span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">2</span><sup style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">nd</sup><span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">
in the </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/search/label/Horace%20Hunter" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Horace
Hunter series</a><span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Hypothetical:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> Law professor Robert Nirtiz, a
scholar and civil-liberties crusader, wins a key First Amendment case in the
Supreme Court of the United States. His client prefers a low
profile. Should Professor Nirtiz be precluded from discussing this case?</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
case is part of our political culture, and prohibiting a civil-liberties’
proponent from discussing a favorable <i>case </i>abridges freedom of political speech, a more fundamental principle
than the ethical commandment to keep client secrets. The same principle applies
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> cases, including those of
Horace Hunter’s clients even if they were offended by Hunter’s blogging. Professor
Richard Zitrin disagrees. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2013/06/zitrin-client-secrets.php">Guard
your clients’ secrets</a></i>.) Against the Virginia Supreme Court’s holding in
the <i>Horace Hunter Matter</i> that the First Amendment prohibits gag rules on court
proceedings, Zitrin writes, “A lawyer remains at all times a lawyer.” The <i>noninsular
</i>alternative was outlined by the four-justice dissent in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada</i> (1991) 501 U.S. 1030, 1054:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">At the
very least, our cases recognize that disciplinary rules governing the legal
profession cannot punish activity protected by the First Amendment, and that
First Amendment protection survives even when the attorney violates a
disciplinary rule he swore to obey when admitted to the practice of law.
[Citations.] We have not in recent years accepted our colleagues' apparent
theory that the practice of law brings with it comprehensive restrictions, or
that we will defer to professional bodies when those restrictions impinge upon First Amendment freedoms. </span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Unfortunately,
the reach of state-bar ideology extended to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gentile</i> court’s majority.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Characteristic
of the state-bar establishment’s <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/08/kanbaroo-court-46b-installment.html">bureaucratic reflex</a> (or insularity, as Zitrin
prefers to call it) is its elevation of bar law over constitutional law, as
when the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-17a-installment-motion.html">cites
the State Bar Review Department against the California Supreme Court</a>.
Although Zitrin has criticized the California State Bar for being
insular, his disagreement with the Virginia Supreme Court’s refusal to discipline
Horace Hunter for blogging about his clients’ cases indicates that even the
most sophisticated official California ethicists are prone to insular
perspectives. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Official
California ethicists have never understood that legal ethics, like all law,
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/10/kanbaroo-court-2nd-installment.html">must evolve as decisional law</a>. (Lack of this recognition is also the reason
California lawyers accept the inaccessibility of a bar law reported only
through the insular-system’s journal.) Law blogging demands that the law
develop because until recently lawyers haven’t had the means to publicize their
cases. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">But
before the advent of blogging, situations existed—such as our hypothetical—where the free-speech rights of an attorney are superior to the attorney’s duty of loyalty to
client. <span style="color: red;">The situations involve political speech.</span> Whereas the distinction between political and
commercial speech is probably unnecessary to support Hunter’s right to blog
without encumbering disclaimers, it comes into its own in distinguishing the kinds
of client secrets an attorney must keep, and these secrets belong mainly to two
categories: secrets useful for the attorney’s commercial advantage and secrets
disclosed carelessly in the course of representation. Disciplining either kind
of disclosures regulates commercial speech, whether the commercial <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">locus</i> is in different commerce or the
same commerce. The advent of blogging forces a clearer recognition that the
duty to keep client secrets stops short of limiting a lawyer’s political
speech.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><i>kanBARoo
court</i> <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">places loyalty to client at the pinnacle of legal ethics</a>, but the
marginal breach of loyalty involved in public discussion of a case doesn’t
justify transgressing attorney rights to free political speech—although the
rules should strive to reconcile the two to the greatest </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">possible </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">extent. The
speech in question is indeed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a form of
political speech particularly salutary for law just because of its <i>partly
</i>commercial character: it illustrates through actual cases how the attorney’s
political aims and legal skills are aligned to further a client’s interest.
This is a form of self-promotion that is likely to be a better indicator of
attorney competence, courage, and conscientiousness than the standard
credentials attorneys often brag up on their web sites. The damage done to the
loyalty ethic (even without rule changes) is minor because this isn’t an area
where the client has a strong claim for loyalty. <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/05/99th-installment-defend-law-blogging.html">Except by contract</a>, clients
have no right to secret cases.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-79701494300861078172013-06-15T14:24:00.001-07:002013-12-10T17:12:01.374-08:00100th Installment. California State Bar Colludes with Gray-Market Criminals: Nefarious Collection Practices using “Wakefield Associates” on Bogus “Debt”<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>The
State Bar’s collection practices</b><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
California State Bar employs gray-market criminals, illegal collection thugs,
to try to recover its <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/12/96th-installment-challenge-california.html">unconscionable “costs”</a> from respondents. These collection
thugs try to harass respondents into paying the invented sums.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Collections
are ineffectually federally regulated under the Fair Debt Collection Act, which
makes it illegal to call people to annoy them. (§ 806, subd. 5 [“causing a
telephone to ring or engaging any person in telephone conversation repeatedly
or continuously with the intent to annoy … any person at the called number”].) </span><span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
collector the California State Bar uses—Wakefield Associates, based in Colorado—is
one of numerous illegal collections operations, which </span><span style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>go
unprosecuted because they systematically avoid pursuing supposed debtors
in their home states</b></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. This is the key to recognizing them: legitimate
collection is by writ of execution on a judgment, for which being based in a
different state is disadvantageous. These thugs’ motto is “a call a day until
you pay.” They will deny they are engaging in harassment, by refusing to admit
the obvious: that harassment is the only conceivable definition for calling
someone who makes it clear they want you to stop. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To eliminate the interstate
collections thugs would require more than the ineffectual Federal Trade
Commission, charged with enforcing the Fair Debt Collection Act: the U.S. Justice
Department would need to concern itself, but the Justice Department is fully
occupied with providing legal cover for torture at Guantanamo and waging its war
against adolescents using birth control.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>Dealing
with collection thugs</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
gray-market collections operations obfuscate three basic legal principles,
which suffice for anyone having to confront these criminals:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Collectors
have rights no greater than their creditor principals.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Creditors
have rights </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">no </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">greater than any other citizen.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">No
citizen can dictate what another says over the telephone, but anyone can (only)
deny permission to phone.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From these
principles, it follows that it suffices legally to tell a collector you don’t
want to deal with it to compel it to stop calling. But then, collections thugs operate outside the law
(their basis of existence consists of illegal practices: badgering weak,
ignorant people into paying supposed debts). Realistically, much more is
required to deter them: anyone who calls one of these criminals back a <i>few
</i>times—or more—should be commended for performing a public service. (Legally,
you can call these telephone tough guys back as many times as you like and say
what you want: they can hardly complain of harassment—although they’ll threaten—since
they initiated communication and insist on continuing it.)</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>Birds
of a feather</b><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Where
is the California State Bar in prosecuting the attorneys who advise these
gray-market criminals on how to avoid prosecution? The answer is that they
aren’t to be seen, where the State Bar colludes with these criminal collections’
operations. The
specific collection syndicate used by the California State Bar engages in the
usual violations of local anti-harassment and federal statutes but goes a step
further. The Fair Debt Collection Act requires that the collector disclose its
identity to caller ID, but Wakefield Associates refuses. Even when it
identifies itself orally, it refrains from revealing it’s a private collection
company, deceptively identifying itself as “the judicial recovery unit.”
Although I doubt they would fool any state-bar respondent, some other corrupt
judicial organs must use Wakefield Associates’ services, and they succeed in
deceiving the legally naïve into fearing that criminal justice is their
pursuer. The business model of these gray-market criminals is otherwise
inexplicable. For the California State Bar, thuggery is business as usual.</span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-75525694677295870012013-05-28T23:01:00.002-07:002014-03-21T21:13:47.878-07:0099th Installment. Defend law blogging: The Horace Hunter Matter in Virginia<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Legal and factual background</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/11/92nd-installment-ethics-of-ghost.html">92<sup>nd</sup>
Installment</a>, “The Ethics of Ghost Blogging,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kanBARoo court</i> predicted that law bloggers would be vulnerable to
repression by the state bars: “Until the legitimacy of blogs is officially
recognized, the law menaces blogging attorneys.” The prediction was confirmed
when the bar and courts of the Commonwealth of Virginia demanded that criminal-defense
attorney Horace Hunter label his postings "Advertisement."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hunter
took an almost unprecedented approach to blogging. His postings were often
about his own successful cases, and when the bar tried to discipline him for declining
to label his blog “advertising,” he blogged his own discipline case, a
strategy <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/10/kanbaroo-court-1st-installment.html">pioneered
by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kanBARoo court</i> in 2007</a>. Like
me, Hunter combined political and commercial motives. I blogged about the
incompetence of the California State Bar and presented my views on legal
ethics, with the purpose of </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">both </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">exposing the state-bar establishment and
promoting myself as a ghostwriter for attorney respondents. Hunter presents a
political critique of popular attitudes toward criminal defendants and rebuts
the “guilty until proven innocent” mentality through examples drawn from his
practice, showing how his experiences support his positions and how his
attitudes and legal prowess make him an effective instrument for achieving
those goals.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">U.S. Constitutional issues</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Horace
Hunter’s case is on writ of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">certiorari</i>
to the Supreme Court of the United States, which has never ruled on the
protections owed hybrid commercial and political speech, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">integration</i> between the political and
commercial should require extending full protection<b> </b>to hybrids.
The Virginia courts ignored the integration between the commercial and
political in Hunter’s blog, instead weighing the political and commercial as
separate, unrelated features. An example is the weight the court accorded the
absence of the opportunity for readers to comment on Hunter’s blog and the blog's access through a link at a commercial web page, incidental features unrelated
to the degree of integration of commercial and political content.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hunter’s
blog deserves the full protection of political speech because he integrated the
commercial and political. Because his blog has been deemed essentially
commercial, the bar claims the right to impose limited restraints if without them
the blog is <i>potentially</i> deceptive. But the risk of deception is speculative.
The Virginia bar hasn’t demonstrated the risk: it has produced no instances
where anyone has been deceived, and it hasn’t been shown generally that
contemporary U.S. citizens confuse honest accounts of attorney success with a
guarantee. Labeling such postings as advertisements, as Virginia requires, or
disclaiming warranty of results, as California might require, is probably
unnecessary even in truly commercial messages, and the bars should bear the burden of
performing the studies proving the necessity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Consumer interests</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Substantive
law blogs could become a boon to consumers. The regulatory agency should
encourage them even when they’re purely commercial because consumers have a
dearth of good means to evaluate lawyers; blogs can highlight skills in
analysis and communication. Who benefits from curtailing legal blogs? Only big
law and other established attorneys, <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/02/88th-installment-did-chief-trial.html">whose interests the state bars cater to</a>.
But when the political and commercial are integrated, as with Hunter’s blog, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://hunterlipton.com/index.php/news/current/">The week in Richmond
criminal defense</a></i>, and as with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kanBARoo
court</i>, treating the blogs as commercial denies ordinary lawyers and other
ordinary citizens—who must also make a living—the realistic opportunity
to pursue their political ends.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The
bar-establishment’s reply is that disclaimers don’t interfere with the message,
but lawyers should know enough about writing to realize that <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/03/prolixity.html">surplusage
misleads, by miscuing the reader</a>. When a posting is labeled
“advertisement,” readers will assume that the usual standards governing
commercial advertising—such as permitting puffery—govern. When a posting is
accompanied by a disclaimer of guarantee of results, readers will assume
that claims regarding successful outcomes are the gist of the message and
disregard the rest. (Even the common disclaimer, “This is not legal advice,” too
often invoked defensively, will lead readers to think the content is unreliable
when, as is often the case, the disclaimer is applied needlessly to matter obviously
not legal advice.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Caveat on client confidentiality</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Since Hunter
demonstrated substantial courage beyond the lawyerly norm by defying the bar, I
criticize him reluctantly, but one aspect of the case gives
cause for unease. Hunter didn’t request approval from clients for posting
documents containing their names, breaching the ethical principle that
attorneys must protect information obtained in the course of representation,
even if it could be obtained by other means. The bar charged him with
violating the client-confidentiality rule, but the Virginia Supreme Court held
in Hunter’s favor, ruling that the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on
disseminating judicial documents. The issue is important because it potentially
strikes at the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html">heart
of attorney ethics: loyalty to clients</a>; one former client complained.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The
courts’ refusal to discipline Hunter for breach of confidentiality was correct
on existing law, but were the state-bar establishment more sagacious, it could
protect the loyalty-based core of the attorney-client relationship
without breaching attorneys' First Amendment rights. Free flow of
information is often restricted by contract without offending the First Amendment
when parties agree to nondisclosure. Use of identifying client information
without consent should be prohibited by a clause implied into every retainer
agreement as the default. Then attorneys’ First Amendment rights are uncompromised
because lawyer and client remain free to contract to allow disclosure.</span><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sources:</span></b><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1121472.pdf"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Horace
Hunter v. Virginia State Bar</span></a></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://hunterlipton.com/index.php/news/current/">The week in Richmond
criminal defense</a></i>
by Horace Hunter</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202600303577&Viewpoint_Court_Struggles_to_Regulate_Attorney_Blogging&slreturn=20130429004856">Viewpoint:
Court Struggles to Regulate Attorney Blogging</a></i> by Richard Zitrin</span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-35989699615141556742013-05-09T11:30:00.000-07:002014-03-26T16:14:14.643-07:00Interlude 26. At ABA Conference, California State Bar prosecutor Melanie J. Lawrence—notorious felon—denies the existence of prosecutorial misconduct<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Prosecutorial misconduct has
become so rampant in the U.S.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">
that official ethicists recognize a problem of state-bar failure to prosecute
prosecutors. kanBARoo court 85th </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Installment</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">, <i><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/12/85th-installment-california-state-bar.html">California
State Bar gives prosecutors free pass: From Philip Cline to Melanie J. Lawrence</a></i>, concluded that <span style="color: red;">state bars fail to prosecute prosecutors because state-bar prosecutors <i>themselves </i>commit rampant misconduct.</span> <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nobc.org%2FResources%2FDocuments%2FPanelists%2520Examine%2520How%2520Prosecutors%2520Can%2520Be%2520Held%2520Accountable%2520for%2520Misconduct%2520.pdf&ei=KkHLUufSO4XdoASq2ICwAw&usg=AFQjCNFuTFFbhQjsHbQYvyzasnIKVoQ6gA&sig2=rctjhFJTQDx_iWdgQHlZ8A">A conclave of official ethicists and state-bar enforcers in Chicago last August</a>
illuminated the problem, first through the insights of academician Ellen
Yaroshefsky of Cardozo Law and functionary Maureen E. Mulvenna of the Illinois state-bar establishment; second, from the example in their midst, Melanie J.
Lawrence, representing the California State Bar. (Hat Tip: Helen W.
Gunnarsson.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>Yaroshefsky</b>
explained research findings: <span style="color: red;">winning outweighs legality</span> <span style="color: red;">when
moralism convulses prosecutors once they convince <i>themselves</i> of the defendant's guilt</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>Mulvenna</b>
described a case, <a href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/howes_disbarment.pdf"><i>In re Howes</i> (D.C. 2012) 39 A.3d 1</a>, which exposes the depth of state-bar complicity in
prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutor Howes bribed inmate witnesses to appear,
by illegally dispersing witness-voucher funds. Howes then lied to the court to
conceal the influence and embezzlement. Shockingly, half of the hearing panel
favored a mere suspension, some members recommending duration as short as
one year, on the ground that the prosecutor acted for meritorious reasons:
convicting a guilty defendant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">One
dissenter denied the problem: <b>Lawrence</b>—<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-17c-installment.html">a functional illiterate in the law</a>—with emblematic California State Bar unearned arrogance and condescension,
lectured the academicians to “go and read the reports for yourself.” Lawrence’s
denial is not the result of naivete. <span style="color: red;">Lawrence knows the California State Bar ignores prosecutorial misconduct, because <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/07/kanbaroo-court-43rd-installment.html">she perpetrated proven misconduct in full view of the State Bar</a> and not only got away with it but was twice
promoted.</span> (</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">See also: <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-14th-installment-turning.html">14th Installment</a>, <i>Turning Point</i>, including Comments;<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-installment-15-predict.html">15th Installment</a>, PREDICT the Court's Ruling; and <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kanbaroo-court-22nd-installment-can-you.html">22nd Installment</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>Can you tell victory from defeat?</i>)</span> Delegating Lawrence to opine on prosecutorial misconduct
further ratifies hers and proves the problem the California
State Bar dispatched Lawrence to Chicago to deny. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-56750009145729384822013-03-13T16:38:00.001-07:002013-12-13T12:52:24.335-08:0098th Installment. The California State Bar seeks new oppressive pleading allowances—and the defense bar pretends to object<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>The official California State Bar “defense bar” </b><a href="file:///C:/Users/srd/Documents/Brick%20by%20brick,%20procedural%20protections%20for%20%20respondents%20in%20the%20discipline%20system%20are%20being%20dismantled."><b>bemoans</b>
</a>the recently proposed formal curtailments of respondents’ <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-17th-installment.html">right to explicit prosecutorial pleading</a>, but in practice the bar court long
ago abandoned its formal pleading rules. (State Bar Rules of Procedure, rules 101(b)(2) & (3).) The defense establishment doesn't know because for years the official bar-defense
attorneys have allowed prosecutors license in their <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/12/kanbaroo-court-17a-installment-motion.html">vague
charging allegations</a>.<b> Let any State
Bar defense attorney name a case where they filed a motion to dismiss because
the allegations failed by standards the Supreme Court repeatedly demanded that
pleadings disclose not just the violated rule and the violating conduct but the
manner in which the conduct violates the rule.</b> (See <i>Baker v. State Bar</i> (1989) 49 Cal.3d 804 and predecessor cases.) <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The bar court effectively repealed the
pleading requirements because the bar-defense establishment had ceased raising them
after the California Supreme Court tired of repeating itself and then
drifted to authoritarianism. Granting prosecutors license has become part of
the defense establishment’s grand bargain: preferential treatment for not
rocking the boat. Because of its inexperience with real cases—those <i>made</i> real by challenging the State Bar’s
central allegations rather than quibbling for a better bargain—the defense bar
can’t even say what’s wrong with the expansion of the state bar’s pleading
powers. The State Bar’s Chief Trial Attorney argues that it can restrict the
rights of respondents to the bare necessities of notice pleading as practiced
in criminal law, and <a href="http://kafkaesq.com/2013/02/23/another-brick-in-the-wall/">the defense
bar responds</a> that this exemplifies the trend toward fewer respondent
rights: “Brick by brick, procedural protections for respondents in the discipline system are
being dismantled.” But noticing a trend doesn't even rise to the level of
counter-argument; it may even help justify. Noting a trend is the best the
defense bar can do when it tries to muster an argument: no wonder it never
dared argue for dismissal based on inadequate pleading!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yet the argument that the new pleading rules are
oppressive and illegal is straightforward. The Notice of Disciplinary Charges
differs from criminal charges in the crucial respect that <b>the answering party must affirm or deny each of the facts the State Bar
pleads</b>. The NDC isn’t just a pleading tool; it rolls pleading
and discovery functions into one procedure. <b><span style="color: red;">To require no connection between fact and
charge violates respondents’ <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/11/kanbaroo-court-11th-installment-whats.html">right
to privacy under the California constitution by inviting arbitrary
fishing expeditions</a>. Even more importantly, <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kanbaroo-court-26th-installment-why-is.html">to require answers to loaded questions, a State Bar norm, violates due process</a>.</span></b> </span> <o:p></o:p></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-19932129969085013762013-01-14T15:17:00.001-08:002013-03-31T13:13:11.538-07:0097th Installment. Wisconsin Bar Equates Clients with Business Partners<b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Attorneys have a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">qualitatively greater ethical duty</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to their
clients than to their firms because the agency relationship between attorney and
client is </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2012/06/95th-installment-stephen-glass-matter.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">essential
to law practice</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, whereas the relationship between attorney and firm is a
business incidental. The courts of the State of Wisconsin disagreed, citing the
principle that they’re ethically equivalent to justify attorney Matthew C. Siderits’s
severe one-year suspension. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We have stated on prior occasions that a lawyer's misappropriation
of funds belonging to a law firm where that lawyer is employed is to be treated
no differently than misappropriation of funds belonging to the lawyer's
client." (</span><a href="http://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&seqNo=91260"><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In re
Siderits</i></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&seqNo=91260"> </a>(Wis., Jan. 4, 2013).) Are sharp business practices with one’s partners
the legal-ethical equivalent of stealing from your clients? That’s what the
Wisconsin courts have repeatedly stated, but the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Siderits</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> decision—too severe for the presented conduct but far too
mild for fraud against clients—shows that Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer
Regulation and Supreme Court know that the equation doesn’t hold; the
rhetoric is for stiffening penalties to enforce </span><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/04/61st-installment-state-bar-for.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">law-firm labor discipline</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and shifting
recovery costs from the firm to its employees.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Attorney Siderits was a recently promoted law-firm shareholder
who allegedly cheated on his firm’s bonus policy by submitting several inflated
bills, which he reduced before the clients were invoiced. Each of the two
years, Siderits obtained a bonus of about $25,000 that he allegedly would not
have obtained had he reported his billings accurately. Despite returning the
bonuses, Siderits was terminated by the firm.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Equating dishonesty with clients
and business associates wasn’t always the rule in Wisconsin, where the courts
announced the new policy in<i> In re</i><i><span style="color: black;"> Casey</span></i><span style="color: black;"> (1993) 174 Wis.2d 341</span>,
in which the attorney nevertheless received the traditional lesser suspension lasting
60 days. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has been clear that disbarment is
warranted when an attorney steals from his clients. <span style="color: black;">Taking money belonging
to a client for oneself "warrants the most severe discipline—license
revocation."</span> (<i><span style="color: black;">In re Wright</span></i><span style="color: black;"> (1994)
180 Wis.2d 492, 493.) </span>But even in its zeal to defend the interests of
major partners, the court imposed discipline much less severe than if Siderits
had stolen funds from a client trust account.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the Wisconsin bar hasn’t succeeded in its drive to equate offenses against clients with those against business partners, we’re left with
the question of why it’s pushing that envelope. Who benefits? The answer, the
major partners in the large law firms, who can use free bar discipline in
place of expensive civil suits. The state bars impose the heavy financial costs
of discipline on the respondent. The threat of discipline secured the return of
the bonus money without cost to the firm. The firm, which could have sought
punitive damages under Wisconsin law, otherwise might have had to sue Siderits on
its own dime. (<span style="color: black;">Wisconsin Stat. § 895.043, subd. (3); <i>Berner Cheese
Corporation v. Krug</i> (2008) 312 Wis.2d 251 [plaintiff may receive punitive
damages for defendant's breach of fiduciary duty if defendant acted maliciously
toward plaintiff or with intentional disregard of plaintiff's rights].)</span></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-20259532454563974002012-12-09T20:32:00.000-08:002013-12-23T13:18:32.758-08:0096th Installment. Challenge the California State Bar Court Fee Schedule in Federal Court<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">A legal-ethics hypothetical<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Attorney
charges client $17,000 for a $2,500 matter. When astounded client inquires,
attorney’s billing office explains that attorney bills in $15,000
increments.</span></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: red;">Hypothetical
question</span> <span style="color: red;">on the California Rules of Professional Conduct:</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Has
attorney committed an ethics violation?</span></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: red;">Answer:</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Attorney
has gravely violated <a href="http://www.calattorneysfees.com/rules-of-professional-con.html">Rules of
Professional Conduct, rule 4<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span>–200(A)</a>,
which prohibits charging an “unconscionable fee.”</span></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The
fee is unconscionable because when fees are based on work done, they must be
based on the work done on the particular case. The fee must be based on “<i>all</i> the facts and circumstances” of the
particular case. (<a href="http://www.calattorneysfees.com/rules-of-professional-con.html">Rules
Prof. Conduct, rule 4<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span>–200(B</a>)
[emphasis added].) Equivalence classes are allowed for work of equal expected
amount but not when the work is highly variable within the range. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">What
discipline for the routine use of this despicable practice? I don’t have access to
the State Bar Review Department’s deliberately inaccessible case law, but I’d
estimate a one-year suspension. Other opinions?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The California
State Bar’s outrageously unconscionable fee structure</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">In
another manifestation of its ethical villainy, the State Bar charges
respondents’ legal costs and fees in exactly this shameful manner, brazenly
defending its prerogative to save administrative costs by overcharging. Defense attorney D.C. Carr (<i><a href="http://www.ethics-lawyer.com/kafkaesq/">Kafkaesq</a></i>) provides a
much-needed <a href="http://kafkaesq.com/2012/08/15/unfair-yet-ineffective-the-state-bar-cost-recovery-structure/">exposure</a>
of this <a href="http://www.statebarcourt.ca.gov/Portals/2/documents/Discipline%20Costs_20120618.pdf">fee
structure</a>. Some examples. 1) A simple challenge before the Review
Department costs about $15,000 if taken during the first 120 days. 2) If a
trial lasts a fraction of a second day, the cost rises about $6,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The California
State Bar Court’s state and federal vulnerabilities</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">There
are at least two bases for challenging the fee structure—one at the state level,
directed to the fees alone; the other federal level, directed against the
whole action because the fee structure denies due process. The state-level
challenge is based on the State Bar’s having exceeded its jurisdiction. Since
the averaging method the State Bar uses is unethical under the Rules of
Professional Conduct as well as under ordinary morality, <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=06001-07000&file=6075-6088">Business
& Professions Code section 6086.10</a>, which provides the right to levee
fees, isn’t plausibly interpreted as giving the State Bar the right to impose
fees unrelated to costs. The statute allows the State Bar “reasonable costs,” a
term of art in California civil procedure, requiring an account of actual costs
in the particular case.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="color: red;"><b>The
federal challenge is based on the federal standards for due process</b></span>, which focus on the right to be heard, apply to state courts, and are offended by arbitrary
fees. <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=06001-07000&file=6075-6088">Business
& Professions Code section 6086.13</a> permits waiver for hardship but
doesn’t compel it, <b><span style="color: red;">where </span></b><span style="color: red;"><b>the threat of huge, disproportionate fees typically
leverages settlement terms and routinely prevents respondents from being heard.</b></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #70ad47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">I plan future Installments to consider
the procedural issues in mounting a state or federal defense based on the
theory that the fee structure denies respondents the right to be heard.</span><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-31740164183747441682012-07-10T20:39:00.000-07:002012-07-13T17:34:06.284-07:00Interlude 25. California Supreme Court weighs in for state-bar extremists: Time to turn to the federal courts<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><b>The
California Supreme Court has taken the </b><a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202561994675&et=editorial&bu=The%20Recorder&cn=California%20News%20Alert%2C%20July%206%2C%202012&src=EMC-Email&pt=The%20Recorder%20News%20Alert&kw=Bar%20Wants%20a%20Do-Over%20on%20Two%20Dozen%20Discipline%20Cases&slreturn=1"><b>unprecedented
step</b> of returning 24 cases</a> for harsher discipline. The Supreme
Court would exceed its jurisdiction by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expressly</i>
demanding an outcome, so it must order the bar court to “reconsider” the
discipline or itself impose the harsher sentence. But the Supreme Court’s terse
message was clear for all who could read, for two reasons: the Supreme Court
cited the infamous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2010/03/76th-installment-give-philip-e-kay-his.html">Silverton<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></a></i>decision; and most tellingly,<span style="color: red;"> </span><b style="color: red;">the
Supreme Court returned no cases in which the Bar Court had recommended
disbarment</b>. The Supreme Court wasn’t interested in reversing disbarments; it
wanted a greater number.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Why
didn’t the Supreme Court impose the disbarments itself? This way, it sent a
clear message to the State Bar: we want you to do the dirty work; that’s the
reason you exist! The State Bar immediately took the hint by petitioning to recall 24 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">additional</i> cases, despite the patent
illegality of this move. (State Bar Court Rules of Procedure, Rule 807(b)(2).) The
one-sidedness of the Supreme Court’s intervention—tacitly urging greater
harshness rather than justice—reassured the State Bar the Supreme Court would let
it run untrammeled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Only
the <a href="http://kafkaesq.com/2012/07/10/state-bar-doubles-down-on-24/">patsies in the state-bar defense establishment </a>contrived to construe the Supreme
Court’s message as ambiguous. The state-bar-court system is their playground
and their livelihood. Never do official bar-defense attorneys appeal to the federal
courts. That would violate their <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/06/california-state-bar-decapitated.html">silent contract with the Office of Chief Trial Counsel</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">California
lawyers should take the Supreme Court’s order—especially its omissions—as an
official announcement that it will overlook unjust prosecutions and excessive
verdicts. If there is any legal remedy for unjust treatment by the California
State Bar, <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/10/jurisdictional-bars-and-issue.html">it lies in the federal courts</a>—where official bar-defense counsel
will never tread.</span></div>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-57373592746918222742012-06-05T21:24:00.002-07:002014-01-27T16:24:35.655-08:0095th Installment. The Stephen R. Glass Matter and the Core Values of Legal Ethics<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #953735;">2<sup>nd</sup> in <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/search/label/Stephen%20A.%20Glass">Stephen <span style="color: #953735;">R</span>. Glass series</a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<b><br /></b>
<b>Even status-quo ethicists
universally reject the California State Bar Court’s decision to admit <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2011/12/93rd-installment-now-its-judge-honns.html">compulsive
liar Stephen R. Glass</a></b>,
who wrote scores of fabricated stories for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Republic</i> news magazine while he financed his law education from
the booty. Many of these ethicists are guarded in their conclusions, but attorney
Brian Ketterer, who is not an ethicist, <a href="http://myadvocates.com/blog/why-california-needs-one-lesslawyer">deals
with the problem directly</a> to advocate a per se rule against the admission
of serious repeat transgressors. The Bar Court’s incompetence warrants taking the
proposal seriously, although the official ethicists are too insular even to
comment. Whereas the proposal expresses the near-universal distrust of State
Bar discretion, blameworthiness for character-and-fitness purposes must be
measured by standards relevant to the practice of law; some misdeeds—such as
drug offenses—may even be entirely irrelevant.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br />
A few
core values and moral capacities are <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2010/01/80-legal-ethics-agential-versus.html">indispensable for the ethical practice of law</a>. Prefiguring the all-important loyalty to client, the central value for law
practice is loyalty to those in whose interest the profession properly
functions, and the expression of loyalty most relevant to law practice is
honesty within the essential professional commitment. Loyalty and honesty together add up to more
than the sum of the two parts. Neither loyalty nor honesty alone is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unconditional</i> virtue for attorneys, who
aren’t completely forthright with opponents or even judges and who inevitably
have conflicting commitments—attorneys’ commitments to family, for example,
will conflict with devoting their whole time for client benefit. What
distinguishes the ethical requirements befitting attorneys’ exercise of agency
on clients’ behalf is the duty to be completely honest in the context of the
agency, telling their clients the whole truth and honoring the promises
accompanying the representation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<br />
Prior
conduct expressing disloyal dishonesty should be the lynchpin of
character-and-fitness screening. Glass’s twofold dishonesty illustrates how
different forms of dishonesty should bear different weights in
character-and-fitness hearings: Glass lied to his editors and he lied to his
readers, but deceiving readers is by far the more important dereliction, a
distinction going far to clarify the crux of the ethics fundamental to practicable
legal representation. Glass’s relationship with his editor was just another
business relationship, but his relationship with his readers goes to the heart
of the ethics proper to journalism—the ethics required for practicable
journalism. The <b><span style="color: red;">chart below</span> </b><i>(click to expand)</i> depicts
the <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/07/kanbaroo-court-41st-installment.html">parallels between journalists and attorneys</a>.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TqtUAuAwQUE/T87YHMRZeGI/AAAAAAAAAFk/vtNZyyQsUFc/s1600/Loyalty+Graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TqtUAuAwQUE/T87YHMRZeGI/AAAAAAAAAFk/vtNZyyQsUFc/s400/Loyalty+Graphic.jpg" height="105" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Glass
was forced to admit performing acts of disloyal dishonesty impugning fundamental
journalistic ideals. A journalist doesn’t lie to his readers for the reason an
attorney doesn’t lie to his clients. That conduct is doubly disloyal: disloyal
to readers (or clients) and disloyal to the profession’s essential ideals.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3526212276559221756.post-88206230633116330972012-04-21T21:17:00.001-07:002014-01-17T20:38:38.508-08:0094th Installment. Esteemed Legal Ethicist Richard Zitrin Lambasts California State Bar<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Convergence </b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="color: red;">Incredibly, though, </b><b style="color: red;">the Bar's Office
of Trial Counsel (OTC) has a history of both under-prosecuting cases, such as
those I cited, </b><b style="color: red;">while at the same time over-prosecuting others</b><b style="color: red;">. </b>(“Why Bar
Sometimes Overreaches on Discipline,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Recorder</i>, Sept. 30, 2011.)</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>So says</b> <b>respected legal ethicist Richard
Zitrin</b>, law professor at University of California, Hastings. (<a href="http://www.ethics-lawyer.com/kafkaesq/?p=209">HT: Kafkaesq</a>.) Does the message
sound familiar? <b>In the</b> <b><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/10/kanbaroo-court-2nd-installment.html">Second Installment</a> to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kanBARoo court</i> in 2007, I wrote</b>:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">These Installments cannot directly
prove the State Bar's penchant for unjust prosecution, even in a single case.
They do not target injustice as such because, in truth, injustice is not the
basic problem. From what I have learned through dealing with the State Bar,
failure to prosecute and insufficiency of charges are as likely as over-zealousness to define the State Bar's performance. These Installments
should not convince readers that State Bar biases produce harsh outcomes but
rather that the incompetence of the State Bar is so extreme that the Bar
machinery will necessarily produce the wrong outcome. <b style="color: black;">Incompetence more than over-zealousness is the defining trait of the California State Bar, and such
incompetence benefits no one except the guiltiest. </b><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Synopsis</span></b></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">In a <a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202475341666">three-part series in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Recorder</i></a> running in September and
November 2011 (most unfortunately, subscription only), <b>Zitrin explains the
incompetence, insularity, and self-protective mindset that induces the State Bar
to suffer disloyal attorneys while it prosecutes vulnerable nonconformists</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Zitrin’s first explanation is that the
</b><b>State Bar prefers the easy way. It </b><b>is too </b><b>incompetent to prosecute many of the
more important cases</b> (<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/11/interlude-16-ronald-n-gottschalk-matter.html">Ronald N. Gottschalk</a> comes to mind), so it picks cases based
on their probative triviality.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b><span style="color: red;">Prosecutions of lawyers who have
seriously and serially harmed clients</span></b>, while hardly daunting, can be
fact-intensive. Prosecutors must prove that a manifestly unfair transaction
with a client was “really” theft or embezzlement, or that apparent abandonment
of the client was not something else—an uncooperative client, miscommunication
or change of address. None of these proofs involves rocket science, but they do
require competent trial lawyers [which, as Zitrin documented earlier, the State Bar lacks].
And <span style="color: red;"><span style="color: black;">they <b><span style="color: red;">are far more difficult than technical trust-fund violations</span></b>, where the
rules are applied strictly and the proof is readily at hand through bank
records.</span></span><b><span style="color: red;"> No wonder OTC loves prosecuting those slam-dunk violations.</span></b></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Zitrin’s second explanation</b>
<b>resembles my <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kanbaroo-court-27th-installment-should.html">polemic
against the State Bar’s appearance-of-impropriety doctrine</a></b>. Zitrin writes:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="color: red;">The Bar has always been highly
sensitive to how it’s perceived.</b> Or, more accurately, how it perceives it’s
being perceived. <b><span style="color: red;">So </span><span style="color: red;">if a judge complains about a lawyer, even if OTC doesn’t
see a violation it will likely examine the case closely. </span><span style="color: red;">If there is political
pressure—or lots of publicity—then even more scrutiny is likely.</span></b></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Zitrin’s third explanation corresponds to
what I call</b> <b><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/08/kanbaroo-court-46b-installment.html">bureaucratic
reflex</a></b>, not judging the case on its facts but on a moralistic archetype of
wrongdoing.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="color: red;">The highly insular State Bar does not
like it when lawyers act outside the box—or, more accurately, outside their
box</b>. <b style="color: red;">It has long been primed to go after people it considers outliers. Too
often, OTC resorts to the “catch-all” discipline provided not in the ethics
rules</b> but in the State Bar Act, originally enacted in the 1930s. Particularly
appealing to prosecutors are Business & Professions Code § 6106 (“The
commission of any act involving moral turpitude, dishonesty, or corruption,
whether the act is committed in the course of his relations as an attorney or
otherwise, and whether the act is a [crime] or not, constitutes a cause for
disbarment or suspension”) and § 6068, subd. (a) (“It is the duty of an attorney
to do all of the following: (a) To support the Constitution and laws of the
United States and of this state.”) </span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Zitrin illustrates the prosecution of
outliers with matters involving famous attorneys</b> in two cases where the State
Bar was reversed by the California Supreme Court: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Belli v. State Bar</i> (1974) 10 Cal.3d 824 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jacoby v. State Bar</i> (1977) 19 Cal.3d 359. The<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/05/64th-installment-philip-e-kay-calumny.html">
recent prosecution of Philip E. Kay</a> is the current version—after the
<a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/09/kanbaroo-court-48b-installment.html">Supreme Court stopped reviewing State Bar matters</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Zitrin assesses the current state of
affairs:</b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="color: red;">The State Bar has a proven track
record of mediocrity in dealing with discipline.</b> Even with the advent of the
professionalized State Bar Court, OTC’s modus operandi has not appreciably
changed: <b style="color: red;">too many serious cases falling through the cracks; too many “easy”
prosecutions resulting in harsh discipline</b><b style="color: red;">; too many of the worst offenders
still in practice.</b></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>And </b><b>Zitrin offers a bleak prognosis:</b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Even assuming that staff can be
improved and professionalized from within, changing OTC’s law firm culture will
be far more daunting. <b><span style="color: red;">There’s no reason
to think that the State Bar’s insularity and opacity will change; no one
I talk to within the Bar showed the slightest interest in that</span></b>.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b> <span style="font-size: large;">Limitations</span></b></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Although Zitrin’s critique shows that even
some official ethicists are catching on, Zitrin’s is less thoroughgoing than <i>kanBARoo court</i>’s;</b> <b>he's dismayed by the prosecution of
outliers but </b><b>seems more concerned about expenses than attorney victims</b>. Regarding one case, where a prosecutor was ordered to investigate whether a state lawyer
could be disciplined for exposing the fraud of a nonclient state boss, Zitrin
comments, “What a waste of time.” But intimidation, not time, is the main issue. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Zitrin is overly impressed with some prosecutors,
such as Jeffrey DalCerro (head of the San Francisco Office of Trial Counsel), whom
Zitrin terms “long committed to busting bad guys.” <b>Zitrin fails to grasp that <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/03/57th-installment-realism-about.html">self-righteous moralism</a></b><b> encapsulates State Bar "insularity and opacity."</b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Most importantly,</b> <b>Zitrin places <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2009/08/67th-installment-tactical-lessons-of.html">excessive confidence in the California Supreme Court</a></b>. He proposes </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">abolishing <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/04/moralism-state-bar-capital-punishment.html">capital punishment</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> to save <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2011/09/should-legal-profession-be-self.html">professional self-regulation</a> by dramatically </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">reducing the Supreme Court's caseload, so it can effectively supervise the Bar. <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/04/moralism-state-bar-capital-punishment.html">A worthy proposal</a> in itself, abolition of capital
punishment, but Zitrin doesn’t understand that the <b>Supreme Court’s special
relationship to the State Bar </b>(which functions as its administrative arm) <b><a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/10/jurisdictional-bars-and-issue.html">creates a conflict of interest</a> which <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2008/03/kanbaroo-court-30c-installment-why.html">incapacitates scrutiny</a>.</b> (</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Guarino v. Larsen</i>
(3rd Cir. 1993) 11 F.3d 1151, 1159 n.4 ["<b>when a court makes a decision
concerning the legality of its own actions, it may be too biased to
justify abstention by the federal courts</b> even if its actions are
considered adjudicative"]; </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Friedman & Gaylord </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(1999) </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Rooker-Feldman, From the Ground Up</i>, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1129, 1132 ["<b>there is sufficient basis for questioning whether a state's highest court can provide the dispassionate resolution that ought to be required when no other judicial review commonly occurs</b>"].)</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0