A lawyer gets sued
Posted by Moonage on 02 Aug 2006 | Tagged as: The Legal Process
Congress won’t do it, the Supreme Court has refused to do it, maybe now this will get it done? Traditionally, lawyers have met a different legal standard that the rest of society has been held to. If they acted unethically or improperly, their state bar would decide their fate. Most often, those bars were politically influenced and ineffective. This, IMO, has led to the mind bogging abuses of the court system. This, is what insurance companies have claimed is a major cost to the health industry. Not so much the legal claims paid out, but the extortion that a lawsuit threat is. It costs companies untold amounts of money to deal with a lawsuit, regardless of its outcome. Now, in this case, the California Supreme Court has decided that this threat of a lawsuit IS extortion ( well, collective huge DUH! ) if it is unsupported by any other litigous situation.
This is right.
This IS tort reform.
It’s about damn time too.
I’ll be surprised if it survives the US Supreme Court tho. Although they’ve been given a conservative tag, lawyers protect each other above all.
5 Comments »
on 02 Aug 2006 at 12:11 pm 1.American Phoenix
said …
Very good article but you are wrong on one key point. Attorneys can be sued civilly for money damages, prosecuted in criminal courts for crimes, AND they are always subject to their state bars for ethical violations. These are not mutually exclusive causes of action and all three of them can be brought in different arenas. The aim of a civil suit is money. The aim of a criminal suit is punishment. The aim of an ethics proceeding within the state bar is the revocation of an attorney’s license to practice law or some lesser disciplinary action that is focused on the attorney recognizing and resolving any unethical conduct. Professions are professions because they have standards and police themselves. Some state bars are more effective than others.
Frankly, this is a very clear cut case. I have no idea what this attorney was thinking as this is one of the first things you learn not to do in ethics class. Extortion is not a settlement offer. I’d be more than happy to see this bad apple lose his bar ticket.
My state bar spends approximately 95% of its revenues on policing attorneys. That’s a really huge percentage, but California is also a really big state. Our professional magazine has a section in back which lists all attorneys which have been disciplined or had their licenses revoked.
on 02 Aug 2006 at 1:18 pm 2.Moonage
said …
I have seen and heard of lawyers being prosecuted locally for actions OUTSIDE of their practice, and have seen some lose their bars for other actions such as embezzlement, but I have never seen one get into trouble like that while actually executing a case. I’d like to see a LOT more of that because I know from experience what happened in this story is not an exclusively stupid act. Some lawyers ( can’t say a lot because I have no clue what the percentage would be ), have relied on legal bullying tactics to shake down opposition for years ( see Rainbow Coalition for example ). This is what needs to stop and why I am hopeful that the publicity of this case and the Supreme Court backing it will have a chilling effect on those tactics.
on 03 Aug 2006 at 9:21 pm 3.American Phoenix
said …
It’s worse than you think. I know of lawyers in one case that withdrew a civil suit, so they could proceed criminally.
They do get in trouble while executing such cases. They get in trouble all the time. The only difference is this case is high profile.
But as I said, some state bars are better than others.
on 03 Aug 2006 at 9:41 pm 4.Moonage
said …
Wonder why this is the first high profile case if these abuses happen all the time?
on 04 Aug 2006 at 12:21 pm 5.American Phoenix
said …
This hasn’t been the first high profile case I’ve read about. Most of the cases, however, are things you read about in your state bar journal - in the disciplinary section.