Does anyone have a good lawyer misbehavior story they would like to share for the upcoming Civil Seminar? Oh, sure. I could do my own research and find some (actually, I already have found some). But I always seem to miss the really entertaining ones. If you send me a good story I can use, I promise I won't call on you during my talk.

Queue 'em up, kids!

Lawyer I once knew was hired on a lemon law case. Instead of exploring the lemon law issue, and w/o knowledge of his client, the lawyer filed a lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. for $5 million. Case dragged along for three or four years and finally set for arbitration. After one day of arbitration, arbitrator recessed and said he could finish the details by phone. Client went in a couple of days later to check on her case and the lawyer told her he didn't have time to mess with her case anymore. No motion to be released...he just unilaterally "fired" his client. By then the truck was a clunker. The client got nothing, and didn't know she could have filed a grievance.

No, the statute of limitations has not run.......................

While serveing on the Grievance Committee some years back there was one particular PI lawyer who always seemed to have problems paying the doctors and chiroquackters after a settlement. When we finally got his "trust" account records we found numerous unexplained withdrawals. When asked about them he responded "oh, those are from my ATM card." No longer practicing law.

Ok, Scott. Here you go:

Civil case, many years back. Lawyer on the other side tape records a phone call between us. Apparently he did this to all his calls, even with other lawyers. Even with other lawyers who were working in cooperation with him (we represented civil co-defendants in litigation). I found out about his taping because a law clerk whose job it was to transcribe the taped calls (!!!!!!!) called me to try to get correct information to make an accurate transcript of the secretly taped call for his boss.

Sparks flew, shall I say.

Got to inform the lawyer about the disciplinary rules that bar this kind of scummy behavior. And forever more, I will communicate with that lawyer only by fax and in writing.

Got my blood pressure up just remembering the rat.

A.D.

The opposing lawyer in a death case had previously represented a potential witness in the case (one we never intended to use, by the way). In the run-up to the trial, the defense investigator took ill and had to be replaced. I later learned he had feigned illness because my opponent had asked him to secrete the witnesss/former client until the trial was over.

This one takes a little explaining.....

One of our prosecutors in our office has taken to the practice of filing a "Request for Notice of Expert Witnesses" as a matter of course in every case.

Without our knowledge, the Clerk's Office sent them over to the Judge's office and he promptly signed the order directing the defense to designate any experts.

One of our defense lawyers became enraged and accused the DA's Office of Ex parte communications with the court. He wrote a nasty and condescending letter to our young prosecutor suggesting that "learn a little about the practice of law" by reviewing various statutes and the Texas Disciplinary Rules.

Our young hero's response was priceless....

"I appreciate your advice on me learning a little about the practice of law. I decided to download the Disciplinary Rules. Unfortunately they were not that exciting and I grew bored with them rather quickly. They are not nearly as interesting as the list of attorneys not eligible to practice law that I down-loaded....."

Turns out....our "aggrieved" lawyer was ineligible to practice law for failing to pay his attorney occupation tax.

He concluded his letter: "I appreciate your interest in being my mentor - hopefully we will both learn a little about the practice of law along the way."

The "mentor" post above calls to mind the pure satisfaction and rightness of seeing a state trooper busily confirming active warrants on the detained numbskull who just passed you on the shoulder doing 95 mph

I don't have a good story to share, but I do have question for all you ethics gurus:

What if you file an application for a protective order against Wife on behalf of Husband and then Wife shows up and wants to file an application against Husband for her protection? Assuming that both qualify for a protective order, can the county attorney's office represent both parties?

This scenario is resolved by a fairly straightforward application of Disciplinary Rule 1.06(a) ("A lawyer shall not represent opposing parties to the same litigation."). I don't believe there's any statutory relief from the conflict, either. Whether ultimately fair or not, the husband won the race not only to the courthouse door, but to your desk for legal help. Wife will need to speak to Legal Aid or private counsel. Or, of course, she can pursue her protective order with the new, handy-dandy pro se protective order packet.

Or you could ask the Court to appoint a county attorney pro tem for the wife.

We have one (barely) civil attorney in our area who is a source of some local notoriety. He was once held in contempt by a district judge for refusing to sit down and repeatedly approaching a witness in a haranguing fashion without permission. Another time, in a DTPA suit against a car dealer, during jury argument he got down on one knee and sang "We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz," I suppose as a means of repreaenting that the defendant dealer's evidence in the matter was a collection of fairy tales. He also persistently referred to the dealer as the "scumbag defendant" until called down by the judge After the jury went out (the real issue was attorney fees), the judge excoriated him on the record for 20 minutes. And the jury came back and gave him what he wanted!!! Maybe it was client sympathy. Another time he formed a company in the same name as another that went out of business, but had held title to a piece of land. His idea was to claim title to that land by virtue of the new company's name. Needless to say, it didn't work.

Here's a current example of what can happen to those who live the life of the ethically challenged:

http://randazza.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/sanctions-o-rly.pdf

Shorter court order: Since you don't seem to understand Rule 11, even after we've explained it to you, it's going to cost you $20k.

I am highly amused that the offending lawyer's name is "O RLY?"

You'll be even more highly amused if you find video footage of Mrs. Taitz' appearances on TV.

Yikes.

How about this one....

A number of years back I replied to a subpoena by providing some records. Seems defense council and her expert witness took my records, re-created the letterhead on their computer, and then added their own interpretations to the original records. End result is that the documents they entered into evidence appeared to have been created by my office, when in fact they were not.....

sad, but true story!