Lawyer disbarred for misuse of client funds
Posted by Jane Friedmann @StarTribune.com

The Minnesota Supreme Court disbarred a lawyer who had used at least $750 in client funds to buy illegal drugs.
From March 2006 to January 2007, Juan Jesus Rodriguez worked for Centro Legal Inc., a St. Paul-based organization that provides low-cost legal services. Rodriguez told clients they owed more than their contracts stated and he diverted payments to himself. His license to practice law was suspended in 2008 by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility.

The order disbarring Rodriguez, a Minnesota attorney since 1995, was signed by Justice Alan Page. Justice Paul Anderson wrote a dissenting opinion stating that Rodriguez contacted the court, admitted his misconduct, described himself as a “devoted member of Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous,” and accepted “with gratitude the consequences of [his] addictive behavior.”
Anderson said indefinite suspension would have protected the public as effectively as disbarment and might have provided Rodriguez incentive to recover.

Read the Minnesota Supreme Court order.

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Attorney disbarred following conviction
— From staff reports at Enewscourier.com

Athens attorney John Hamilton McLain V, 51, has been disbarred from practicing law in Alabama following his conviction last year of sexually abusing two girls, ages 12 and 13, in 2008.

McLain previously was a certified public accountant and later practiced law in downtown Athens.

The disbarment order from the Supreme Court of Alabama, based on a ruling from the Disciplinary Commission of the Alabama State Bar, was sent Thursday to The News Courier to be published as a paid legal notice. It states the disbarment was effective May 27.

McLain was convicted Feb. 12, 2009, and later sentenced in Madison County Circuit Court on two counts of enticing a child, two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of second-degree unlawful imprisonment.

Lawyers with the Attorney General’s Office presented evidence during a four-day trial in February 2009 showing McLain picked up the girls as they were walking to the Madison Square Mall without their parents’ knowledge on the night of July 3, 2008. He drove them around Huntsville in his sports car and then to Monte Sano Mountain, where he traced the ring connecting the cups of one girl’s swimsuit, the girls testified. He then drove them to his house in Athens, kept them overnight, touched the breast of one girl, invited the two to join him in the shower and to sleep in his bed, then walked nude in front of them, the girls testified.

The State Supreme Court upheld the conviction in March.

Madison County Circuit Judge Jim Smith sentenced McLain to a total of 20 years on two felony counts, one for each victim. The judge split the sentences so McLain would have to serve a total of six years in prison followed by 14 years on probation. He also was sentenced to a year and three months on misdemeanor counts involving the two children. The sentences on the misdemeanor counts run at the same time as the 20-year felony sentence.

McLain is serving the sentence in Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery.

Fairmont Lawyer Disbarred for Misrepresentation
Full Story At MetroNews
Charleston

The West Virginia Supreme Court has disbarred a Marion County lawyer for misrepresenting himself to prison officials.

According to the state’s High Court, G. Patrick Stanton, Jr. entered the Prunytown Correctional Facility in Taylor County in October 2005 to see a female inmate, Rose Auvil. Stanton told prison officials that he was Ms. Auvil’s attorney. However, Stanton was working as the Director of the West Virginia Office of Consumer Advocacy and thus could not practice law privately.

It was later learned by the Investigative Panel of the Lawyer Disciplinary Board that Stanton had represented Auvil in the past, but he had also engaged in a sexual relationship with her that dated back to 1986. The court documents say that Stanton admitted that he had lied to a corrections official over the phone to schedule an attorney-client visit with the woman.

He also traveled from Fairmont to Grafton in order to once again engage in sexual acts with Auvil. On the day of the actual visit, the two were caught in such an act by a prison guard leading to the eventual ethics proceedings.

The Disciplinary Board voted to suspend Stanton’s law license for a year. However, the Supreme Court believed his actions to be so disturbing that it required the permanent forfeiture of his license to practice law in West Virginia.

The Law of Success

DirtyLAWndry reader - “Melissa” - emailed me this interesting tidbit regarding Lance David Lewis. Apparently, Lewis was padding time during a document review project at Pepper Hamilton. He worked from November 12, 2007 to December 4, 2007 on the project at an average of 32 hours each week. However, he decided to continue submitting timesheets to his staffing agency, HireCounsel, after his project ended. He gradually increased his hours from 32 hours per week to about 80 hours per week. He did this until August 2008 when he was finally confronted by HireCounsel. By then, he was paid a total of $79,353 by fraudulently logging 2605.10 hours on his timesheets that he actually never worked. He even received an additional 40 hours for bonuses and holiday pay that he didn’t deserve.

Additionally, Lewis also stole settlement funds belonging to a former client in the amount of $12,500 by forging both his name and his client’s name on the settlement check.

And as if that weren’t scandalous enough, in August 2008, Lance David Lewis was arrested and facing six criminal charges: 1) Attempted Murder, 2) Aggravated Assault, 3) Simple Assault, 4) Possession Of An Instrument Of Crime, 5) Reckless Endangerment, and 6) Conspiracy. By September 2008, the attempted murder charge was dismissed for lack of evidence, but he eventually pleaded guilty to remaining charges.

You can find the PA Disciplinary Board’s Opinion here. From his website, LanceDLewis.com, he seemed to be pursuing a successful career. I wonder how everything went so wrong.

Obermayer law firm fires Rotwitt
By Joseph Tanfani and Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Attorney Jeffrey B. Rotwitt, the lawyer who earned fees on both sides of a deal to build a new Family Court building in Center City, was fired Thursday by his law firm.

Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP announced the firing a day after Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille killed Rotwitt’s deal to develop a $200 million Family Court tower at 15th and Arch streets.

The project is still moving forward, with the state serving as developer. But there is no way of telling whether the state will recover any of the millions in fees already paid out to Rotwitt and his partner, Conshohocken developer Donald W. Pulver.

“We have to figure out who got paid what,” Castille said in an interview Thursday. “Our lawyers are going to get to the bottom of that. We will take the appropriate action when we learn the facts.”

Rotwitt has spent 35 years at Obermayer, a Philadelphia-based firm with 125 lawyers that has long been a big-money player on Pennsylvania’s political scene. Last year, the firm contributed a total of $175,000 to statewide campaigns.

Rotwitt has said in recent interviews that he has done nothing wrong. He said he became a codeveloper of the Family Court building with Pulver only after his work find sites for Castille had ended.

He said he has been up-front and open about his involvement in the project and is now being made a scapegoat. He has also said that he was not paid as a lawyer by the courts, but as a broker.

Rotwitt was hired in 2006 by-then Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman to find a site for a new courthouse to consolidate Family Court operations in Philadelphia. Originally, Rotwitt was supposed to be paid a commission, after a deal was done.

But after Newman left the court, Castille in 2008 signed off on a $3.9 million fee for Rotwitt, and the courts started making $55,000 monthly installment payments to him. Obermayer has already received a total of about $1.3 million.

But Rotwitt also has earned around $500,000 in additional fees as a codeveloper on the same project, in a handshake deal with Pulver, who now also wants to distance himself from the attorney.

Pulver sent Rotwitt a letter Thursday ending his partnership with Rotwitt’s Deilwydd Property Group FC L.L.C.

Obermayer’s partners say Rotwitt never told them that he had a deal with Pulver to codevelop the Family Court building.

“The management committee had no knowledge of Mr. Rotwitt’s involvement as a developer of the proposed Philadelphia Family Court Facility until the investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer,” the firm said in a brief statement.

Castille also said he never knew Rotwitt was a codeveloper until The Inquirer reported it.

“If he’s collecting money on the side, I don’t think I’d be too happy,” Castille said of Obermayer’s decision to fire Rotwitt.

“The guy’s grabbing a half-million dollars that should have gone to the law firm,” he said.

But Rotwitt said that everyone knew about his deal with Pulver - Castille, other court administrators, the court’s lawyers, major development firms and particularly his partners at Obermayer.

“The record is clear,” Rotwitt said in an interview last week.

“The world of the city knows it … the realty community, the construction community, the design community, minutes of meetings, drafts of documents, signed documents, it goes on and on and on,” he said.

Rotwitt, 59, is owner of the Kixx indoor soccer team and a partner in a $85 million deal - backed by $10 million in state funding - to build a movie studio in Chester Township.

Involved in number of other high-profile real estate transactions, Rotwitt was a member of Obermayer’s management committee and was its biggest earner, said his spokesman, Kevin Feeley.

“I think Jeff’s view is, in light of all the publicity over the past week he understands the firm’s decision,” Feeley said.

Rotwitt has provided copies of documents that he sent to the courts stating that his firm, Deilwydd Property Group FC L.L.C., was codeveloper of the Family Court building. He also acknowledged he was codeveloper in an interview with The Inquirer last month that triggered the current controversy.

Rotwitt and Obermayer in 2003 were involved in another unusual real estate deal - this one the subject of a critical state grand jury report.

In early 2003, Haverford Township commissioners were looking for help in finding a developer for the 212-acre site of the old Haverford State Hospital. A faction of the board, meeting in secret, decided to hire Rotwitt and Obermayer, according to the grand jury report.

The terms: Obermayer would receive $7,500 a month and 6 percent of the sale when the deal closed. Rotwitt sent developers requests for proposals, and the board eventually made a deal for $30.6 million.

That meant Obermayer and Rotwitt were due for a fee of $1.8 million. But Obermayer chairman Martin Weinberg, a onetime mayoral candidate in Philadelphia, didn’t want to wait for the money, the report says, and told Rotwitt to press for an advance payment before the end of 2003. Without any public vote, commissioners decided to pay Obermayer $600,000.

After the payment surfaced, Rotwitt and Obermayer gave the money back. Rotwitt says that money was not an advance on the fee, but payment for other legal work on the project; the grand jury report calls that “a ruse.”

Weinberg did not return requests for comment.

Weinberg and former Justice Newman began dating five months after she hired Rotwitt in 2006. They were married at the beginning of 2007, and the marriage was annulled later that year.

Newman says her personal ties to the firm had nothing to do with her decision to retain Rotwitt.