Disciplining Lawyers in Connecticut
The Following Investigative Reports are by
Thomas D. Williams, Courant Staff Writer
March 7, 2004
Disciplining Bad Lawyers A Long, Slow
Process
While State Panel Deliberates, Questionable Attorneys Continue To Practice
As a fraud investigator for the state Department of Social Services, Kathleen
T. Griffin has heard many tales of trust betrayed. Now she has one of her own.
More than 3½ years ago, Griffin hired 51-year-old attorney Robert A. Izzo of
Southington to handle a property dispute. Before he
was done, he cost her a $2,600 property damage award and crippled her credit
rating by failing to pay a $900 tax bill. Griffin is not the only client Izzo
harmed. He accumulated 44 complaints from clients in 11 years before his Connecticut law license was revoked in May. Nor is Izzo the only lawyer who has been allowed to continue to
practice - and seek new clients - while ethics complaints pile up. During the
past three years, the Statewide Grievance Committee deliberated a year or more
before taking seven Connecticut lawyers with the most serious misconduct records to court, a Courant
review has found. The seven accounted for 71 complaints. Critics say the public
is being put at risk by the cumbersome grievance committee process and a reluctance by the committee to seek interim suspensions of
lawyers' licenses during its investigations. State Attorney General Richard
Blumenthal believes the system is flawed. Committee lawyers, he said, fail to
seek "immediate intervention to secure clients' money, or to expedite
action where there is a clear and present danger of continuing
misconduct." Bridgeport attorney
Raymond Rubens, chairman of the Statewide Grievance Committee, acknowledged
that the committee often takes too long to make a decision. The system has been reformed three times in
the last 15 years, but concerns remain. The latest changes, approved by
judicial officials 18 months ago, went into effect in January. It will be some
time before their effectiveness can be evaluated. Lawyers' dealings with clients are guided by
the Rules of Professional Conduct. The most common charges lawyers confront
during grievance committee inquiries are neglecting a client's legal problems;
failing to communicate with a client; dishonesty, fraud or deceit; breaking
client confidences; misusing clients' trust accounts; charging excessive or
unreasonable fees; and disregarding court rules and procedures.
The Bad Ones
Between 1995 and 2002, 74 lawyers accounted for 342 complaints. Two had 14
each, while others received from two to 12 complaints each. Izzo
had the most, with 29. If Griffin and other clients had checked Izzo's record,
they would have seen a 1998 bankruptcy, three reprimands and more than a dozen
relatively recent complaints of serious misconduct. Had Griffin known grievance cases are public record,
she would not have hired Izzo after a neighbor's
water problem flooded her Waterbury condominium in the summer of 2000.
But Griffin didn't check, and she hired Izzo to help her recoup damages and sell the property. Griffin paid Izzo an
initial fee of several hundred dollars and asked him to settle taxes on the
property from the proceeds of the sale. Griffin initially won a $2,600 claim for the water
damage. Griffin said Izzo failed to act, though, when
the court reopened the case and dismissed it. When Griffin sold the condo, Izzo
did not pay the taxes, Griffin said. She discovered this only after her credit card wasn't honored as
a result of a bad credit report triggered by the unpaid taxes. Griffin's $900 claim for the tax bill has been
pending for two years with the state Client Security Fund. That fund is raised
through an annual $75 fee paid by the state's practicing lawyers and judges to
compensate victims of lawyer misconduct.
Izzo's law license was suspended in January
2002. But Izzo was not disbarred until about four
months after Superior Court Judge Howard Owens sentenced him to 45 days in jail
in January 2003 for stealing $13,500 from another client. To this day, Griffin wonders why lawyers like Izzo aren't stopped sooner.
"It does make you feel that [lawyers] are protecting one
another," Griffin said. "It gives the appearance of
that, even if they are not. Certainly, the pursuit of bad lawyers has a low
priority." During the year that it
took the grievance committee to force Izzo into
court, where his license was suspended, nearly a dozen more complaints rolled
in. Izzo said the experience was "very
painful" for him. "I really don't want to be interviewed about these
things."
Even Single Complaint Can
Drag On
While cases involving repeat offenders often
take a long time to resolve, even a single complaint can drag on. Consider Pat Feeley, 63, a writer who sued her lawyer, Westport attorney Hale Sargent,
and filed an ethics complaint against him in 1998. Feeley,
who lives in Norwalk, said Sargent in 1992 loaned
$59,000 of her inheritance, which he had been holding in escrow, to another,
cash-strapped client. The loan was secured by a mortgage on property in Westport and monthly interest payments were made on
the loan, with the principal due in 1994, according to the grievance committee
file. Feeley said she later learned that Sargent had been paid $12,000 in legal fees from the other
client out of the $59,000 loan. Tom Sargent, speaking for his brother and law partner, said Feeley approved Hale Sargent's
loaning her money to another client. Feeley denies
that. It took nearly six months and
another lawyer's $5,600 in fees to collect on the loan, Feeley
said. In late 2002, Hale Sargent and his firm agreed
to a $125,000 malpractice insurance settlement, Feeley
said, but he and his partner admitted no wrongdoing. "It probably wasn't a good idea,"
Tom Sargent said of the loan. Asked about the settlement, Tom Sargent said: "I opposed giving her one dime. It was
an independent decision of the [law firm's] insurance company." Some 18 months after Feeley
filed her complaint, Hale Sargent was reprimanded for
his handling of the loan. Tom Sargent did agree with Feeley
that grievance complaints take far too long to resolve. He said some members on
the volunteer three-member panels deciding the cases drop out, disrupting
evidence gathering. Feeley
and other critics say administrative judges trained in ethics issues should be
hearing misconduct complaints against lawyers after inquiries by professional
committee investigators. Those most
harmed by committee delays are clients considering filing malpractice claims
against their attorneys. Lawyers are reluctant to file such claims against
other lawyers without knowing what the grievance committee discovered.
How The
System Operates
In Connecticut, complaints against lawyers are first
filed with the 21-member statewide committee. If the complaint is not dismissed
by two lawyers and a non-lawyer of that committee, it is sent to a local
district committee. There are one or more committees in each of the state's 13
judicial districts. The all-volunteer
district committee, also made up of two lawyers and a non-lawyer, can dismiss a
complaint or refer it to the 21-member statewide committee for review by a
statewide subcommittee, also made up of two lawyers and a non-lawyer. The
district committee has 110 days to decide a case and can get a 30-day
extension. The statewide subcommittee
can exonerate or reprimand a lawyer. It also can call for the lawyer to make
restitution or get more legal education. And, with the lawyer's consent, the
panel can have the lawyer submit to financial audits or get drug and alcohol
treatment. The subcommittee has 90 days to decide a case and can get a 30-day
extension. The panel can also recommend to the Superior Court that the attorney
be suspended or disbarred. Cases against
lawyers involving multiple complaints take even longer -sometimes more than a
year - to review because they are not consolidated into a single investigation. Even after the grievance committee is
finished, the court can take another year to decide the most serious cases. A judge can then suspend, disbar, order a lesser punishment
or exonerate the attorney.
And then, the lawyer can appeal to a higher court.
In most states, grievance committees devote prime resources to investigating
and punishing the worst - usually repeat - offenders. Cases involving repeat
offenders require expeditious treatment, experts say. As a measure of
effectiveness, grievance committees in many states readily disclose the average
time it takes to resolve complaints. In Connecticut, when asked for the data, Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, a spokeswoman for the judicial department,
said the information is in a database, but the committee's staff doesn't have
the time to retrieve it. But in North Dakota, for instance, the lawyer disciplinary
agency in 2002 reported that it took an average of 4.5 months to discipline
lawyers. Yet in Connecticut the rules give the grievance committee
more than 10 months to decide. Rubens,
head of the Statewide Grievance Committee, said staff shortages have made it
difficult to handle the workload. In August, cuts in clerical staff hurt the committee's
ability to answer the phone to help consumers with new and existing complaints.
That problem has since been partially rectified, Stearley-Hebert
said. The judicial department, not the
committee, decides how the committee's office personnel and the part-time
investigator are used, Rubens said. And
the number of complaints has been increasing. The 1,358 grievances filed in the
fiscal year that ended June 30 reflect a 14 percent jump over the 1,188 filed
in the 2001-2002 fiscal year. That complaint total is 6.7 percent higher than
the 2000-2001 fiscal year. Between July 2000 and
November 2003, 3,655 complaints were filed against lawyers. Yet just 10 lawyers
were disbarred and 31 were suspended. The grievance committee issued 138
reprimands and ordered 14 others to take remedial action. Some argue that the low number of suspensions
and disbarments is evidence that many complaints are unwarranted. Others say
it's a sign of the difficulty the legal profession has disciplining itself.
New Rules
New procedural rules took effect Jan. 1. They were intended to address the long
delays. The committee now has two lawyers to assist complainants. In the past,
many of those aggrieved represented themselves, sometimes delaying proceedings
with their lack of knowledge. Gone now,
however, is the client's right of appeal when a local committee decision favors
the lawyer. On the other hand, lawyers with three reprimands on their record
now will have their cases expedited if a fourth complaint is filed against
them. Some critics say Connecticut's system needs more radical change. Ken Jorgensen, director of the Minnesota
Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board, said the complaint system used in Connecticut for repeat offenders is "terribly
inefficient." It's the same complaint system Minnesota abandoned two decades ago. That was about
the same time Connecticut adopted that multilayered system. In Minnesota, unlike Connecticut, multiple complaints against the same
lawyer are handled by the same committee counsel and by a single panel of
fact-finders simultaneously. This way, a lawyer's alleged misconduct may be
considered in the context of overall performance as quickly as possible,
Jorgensen said. Some also believe
changes are necessary in how lawyer oversight is funded. In Connecticut, the committee's budget, and thus
staffing, is subject to spending cuts by the governor and the legislature. In many states, however, lawyers pay an
annual fee to fund all committee operations. A nationwide survey of grievance
committees in 2000 showed Connecticut spent $1.2 million on lawyer discipline, less than Georgia, Maryland and Minnesota, states with similar lawyer populations. For the past 30 years, some legislators,
lawyers, clients and judges have unsuccessfully tried to get the committee more
staff and money. Opponents of
strengthening the committee - mostly other lawyers, judges and legislators,
some of whom are lawyers - say that the system works well now and that
strengthening the system would only make it harder on lawyers facing frivolous
complaints. Stearley-Hebert
said the committee has added some staff and created a counseling program to
help lawyers deal with financial and medical problems. Two new disciplinary
counsels, hired to assist those filing a complaint, began preliminary work in
December. The new lawyers should help ease the workload and speed up the
process, she said. But Rubens is
concerned. He said the new attorneys assisting the aggrieved may actually make
the hearings more contentious, and thereby more time-consuming. Blumenthal, after being informed of The Courant's findings about committee shortcomings, has
recommended reforms to Judge Joseph H. Pellegrino, the chief court
administrator.
They include:
Giving the committee the authority to issue emergency orders, subject to
judicial review, when a client's money or property is at risk or lawyers are
committing repeated misconduct.
Sending serious multiple complaints directly to statewide
committee hearings, bypassing the local committee.
Maintaining, rather than erasing, records of attorney
grievance proceedings.
Suzanne Mishkin, an associate counsel for HALT, a
nonprofit legal reform group evaluating lawyer grievance committees nationwide,
said Connecticut's system needs more non-lawyer participation.
The committee also needs a better website informing the public of all facets of
the grievance process including the average time it takes to process
grievances, she said.
Last year, HALT gave Connecticut one "incomplete" rating because the state provided no
information on how long it takes to decide a complaint.
The phone number of the grievance committee is 860-568-5157. The available
grievance committee decisions on lawyers are at this web address: www.jud.state.ct.us/faq/grievance/default.htm.
The website where many questions about lawyers are answered, including where a
person can locate the Statewide Grievance Committee, is: www.jud.state.ct.us/faq/attorney.html.
Courant Staff Writer Josh Kovner assisted in the
reporting of this story.
Panel
Finally Clears Lawyer; Sex Charge Filed 5 Years Ago
By Thomas D. Williams
Much of what
ails lawyer oversight in Connecticut is laid bare in the dragged out ethics
investigation of former state prosecutor Anthony Troy Martin. Although Martin was charged nearly five years
ago with sexual assault, it was not until last month that the Statewide
Grievance Committee finally concluded its inquiry and cleared him. The case could have been concluded 3½ years
earlier, if the judge or prosecutor handling Martin's criminal case had
addressed the ethics issue, as Rules of Professional Conduct require. Instead, the grievance committee brought a
complaint itself in 2000, because the court never dealt with it. In 1999, Martin, then 33, was arrested after
a woman told Hartford police that Martin had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her. Although
the criminal charges against Martin were dismissed, one count of third-degree
assault was erased only after he completed six months of probation. When criminal charges are brought against a
lawyer, separate ethics proceedings affecting his law license are usually
postponed until the charges are disposed of. Then, the prosecutor and the judge
are mandated to either resolve the ethics issues themselves or send them on to
the grievance committee.
The
grievance committee decides whether a lawyer violated the rules of conduct.
Just before the
disposition of Martin's criminal case, Martin's lawyer, Hubert J. Santos,
convinced supervisory criminal court Judge Elliot N. Solomon to allow the case
to be heard instead by Judge Howard Scheinblum, who
presided in the same court where Martin prosecuted defendants. Scheinblum quickly granted Martin's application for
accelerated rehabilitation and six months' probation and ordered him to do 100
hours of community service. Attorney
Wesley Spears, representing the woman Martin was accused of assaulting, told Scheinblum the woman did not object to Martin's probation.
Spears also told the judge she had settled a related lawsuit against Martin. It
was later publicly disclosed that she received a $25,000 settlement. Martin was suspended with pay following his
arrest. He resigned from the prosecutor's job just before Scheinblum
granted his probation. But neither Scheinblum nor the prosecutor, Kevin Russo, did anything to
resolve the ethics issues related to Martin's license to practice law. State court judges and prosecutors usually
make sure they deal with the status of an accused lawyer's license to practice
law, as ethics codes require. They can decide on the record that there is no
worthy ethics issue, refer the allegations to the grievance committee or call
for a court hearing to decide if punishment is necessary. Scheinblum declined
comment on the case. Russo gave no reason for not acting, but said his inaction
was of little consequence because the grievance committee decided to review
Martin's conduct on its own. The
Hartford-New Britain District Grievance Committee, reacting to a news story
about the disposition of Martin's criminal case, took up the ethics issue on
its own initiative six weeks after Martin's probation began. The grievance proceeded so slowly that by the
time the district committee was ready for a hearing, Martin had finished
probation. As a result, the criminal case against Martin, by law, had been
erased. Furthermore, Martin refused to
testify before the committee, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination. Spears refused to identify his client, the accuser, as a
witness, according to the panel's ruling. With no evidence, no witnesses and no
criminal case, the district committee decided to drop it. Dissatisfied with the outcome at the district
level, the statewide committee chose to pick up the matter. After some initial
difficulty locating the woman, the committee introduced the woman's testimony
against Martin from a prior administrative proceeding. She testified that he
sexually assaulted her. Martin testified the sex was consensual. The state committee held its final hearing on
Martin's case in May. Its options included clearing Martin, reprimanding him or
referring the case to Superior Court for possible suspension or disbarment.
After he was
cleared last month, Martin withdrew his state Supreme Court challenge to the
committee's inquiry. His grievance committee file was erased, as new ethics
rules require. Under old rules, all complaints reviewed by the statewide
committee were available to the public. Asked
about the long delay in resolving Martin's grievance, Atherton B. Ryan, counsel
to the Hartford-New Britain grievance committee, said: "Frankly, I have always felt that the
serious cases take too long for the committee to resolve."
Questionable Counsel: Woman Says Man With
No Law Degree Worked On Her Custody Case
By Thomas D. Williams
Margaret Briggs Brooks of Greenwich said her child-custody fight was bad enough, but then she learned that
a legal assistant working on her case was an ex-convict.
Brooks, 47, was fighting over custody of her two young sons and financial
support during a bitter divorce case. She said she relied on a lawyer she
initially trusted, only to have her legal and personal problems significantly
worsen. When she complained to the Statewide Grievance Committee, the body of
volunteers that polices attorneys in Connecticut, she found it overworked, understaffed,
and way behind - often many months - in resolving complaints. Brooks'
17-month-old complaint against New Haven attorney Howard Lawrence is awaiting action by the statewide
committee. A local grievance committee in April found probable cause that Lawrence improperly referred her case to a man who
at the time was wanted by the police. The
New Haven Judicial District Grievance Committee found evidence to suggest that Lawrence violated ethics rules requiring attorneys
to charge "reasonable" fees and to bear responsibility for non-lawyer
assistants they employ. In November,
after a seven-month wait, the statewide grievance panel heard Brooks'
complaint. After a second hearing in January, still a third hearing was
scheduled, in April, because the ex-convict still hasn't testified. "It's extremely traumatic and it's
extremely painful to have to wait," she said, "especially when
there's children involved. It's like you're stuck in a war and it never ends. "The state has to do something for the
citizens. They bend over backward for the attorneys," she said. "I
hope they're equally as fair with me. ... To put this burden on a lay person to
function as a prosecutor, complainant and witness, it's totally unfair." Brooks, a former actress and model and now a
bank loan officer, alleged that Lawrence assigned Dan Beeman as a lawyer to advise
her, and he spent about 100 hours on the case. Lawrence told the state committee he hired Beeman as a legal research assistant at the urging of Dan
Millstein, a disbarred lawyer who thought that Beeman
was an attorney. Beeman told him he had graduated
from Fordham Law School, Lawrence said. Lawrence said that Beeman, whom he paid $10 an hour as a legal aide, did not
spend one minute working for Brooks. He introduced Beeman
and the rest of his staff to Brooks, Lawrence said, but Beeman
did no research on her case. Later, Lawrence said, he learned that Beeman
had served prison time for fraud in New York, Massachusetts and Florida. But, the lawyer added, he never checked
out Beeman's schooling or personal background before
hiring him. Brooks said Lawrence charged her an initial $25,000 retainer to
have Beeman handle all the work outside of court. She
complained that Beeman convinced her to pay him more
than $10,000 in cash and money orders for his work. Her
legal fees eventually reached $40,000, Brooks said, before she complained.
To counter Lawrence's denials that Beeman worked for
her, Brooks produced a letter from a Greenwich doctor saying he received a call
from a man identifying himself as Beeman, Brooks'
attorney and friend, seeking information about her mental health. Lawrence said that when he discovered Beeman was
using a calling card suggesting he was an attorney, he hired an investigator to
check him out. The investigator discovered that Beeman
was a fugitive from Florida. Lawrence said he called police, and Beeman was arrested. He spent some months in jail before
being freed and returning to Connecticut where he now lives. Beeman said he did research work for Lawrence for $10 an hour, but refused comment on
whether he worked on Brooks' case. Beeman, however,
was outraged about his arrest on what he called outdated charges. He said he
spent six months behind bars in Connecticut and two months in Florida before authorities finally determined his fugitive arrest was
unwarranted. Lawrence said Brooks agreed to pay the $40,000 he
had charged her and received $135,000 in increased alimony from her husband.
But Brooks says that Beeman's inadequate research
cost her sole custody of her two children and hurt her chance to receive more
alimony. Lawrence testified before the committee that the
judge in charge of the case specifically praised him for the diligence of his
courtroom work. Outside of the hearing, Lawrence said Brooks made up her story because she
is "paranoid." Looking
directly at Lawrence during a recent hearing, Brooks exclaimed:
"It's my money you took and it's my life and my children you
destroyed!"