A Batavia attorney has been disbarred after he failed to tell his clients his law license had been suspended for misleading clients with bizarre lies.

According to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, Manos Kavvadias was disbarred this month by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Kavvadias was suspended for one year in 2009, in part for failing to help a client and leading her to believe he was taking extraordinary steps to remedy a case he knew had already been dismissed.

According to the ARDC, Kavvadias represented a woman in 2003 on a drunken driving charge. The woman pleaded guilty to drunken driving — her second conviction — and her license was suspended. Two years later, she asked Kavvadias to represent her as she petitioned for a restricted driving permit.

Kavvadias did initially represent the woman at a Secretary of State hearing and even sued the Secretary of State’s office to compel them to grant a restricted license.

But after a judge ruled that Kavvadias had not completed basic paperwork, the attorney agreed to dismiss the case — without the woman’s consent.

Kavvadias continued to tell the woman and her husband that he was pursuing the case, the complaint says.

In April 2007, he lied to the couple, saying that Secretary of State Jesse White, an assistant attorney general and a Secretary of State employee had been arrested for failing to participate in her case.

Kavvadias then told them he had contacted Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin and she had agreed to conduct a May 2007 news conference about the Secretary of State’s lack of attention to the woman’s claim, also not true.

Both these claims were false, and Kavvadias lied so his client would think he was still pursuing her reinstatement request, the complaint says.

Kavvadias agreed to meet with the couple at a mall to prepare so they could drive together to the imaginary press conference. When they arrived, Kavvadias admitted the ruse.

Kavvadias was disbarred when he failed to notify his other clients that his law license had been suspended and continued to appear in court on their behalf.

Kavvadias has a Batavia mailing addresses but several online directories list a Wheaton business address. All phone numbers for his office were disconnected Friday.

Credit: Matt Hanley mhanley@stmedianetwork.com / BeaconNews.SunTimes.com

Disbarment Sought for Attorney Who Claimed to Channel Client’s Dead Wife

The State Bar of Arizona is looking to throw the book at a Phoenix attorney who told a client that she was channeling his dead wife, then allegedly lied about it during an unrelated disciplinary proceeding.

An Arizona Supreme Court hearing officer in June recommended that attorney Charna Johnson’s law license be suspended for six months and a day followed by two years of probation. Both Johnson and the State Bar objected to the hearing officer’s recommendation. The Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Arizona earlier this month upped Johnson’s suspension to one year followed by two years of probation after oral arguments were made on Sept. 11.

The State Bar is still not satisfied with the punishment, however. It has filed a notice of its intention to ask the Supreme Court to review the case and disbar Johnson, said Bar counsel Stephen Little.

Johnson’s attorney, Nancy Greenlee, a solo practitioner, declined to comment on the case citing its ongoing nature. Johnson did not respond to calls for comment.

The strange case is a first for Arizona, said State Bar spokesman Rick DeBruhl.

“I don’t think anyone has had a case like this before,” he said.

The allegations that Johnson channeled her client’s dead wife surfaced in an unrelated disciplinary case involving Johnson’s handling of a different client’s will. Johnson was censured in January of 2009 and given a year of probation for her conduct related to the creation of the will, but she denied acting as a medium for the dead at the time, DeBruhl said.

However, a hearing officer’s report prepared in June disputes that claim. The report says that Johnson began representing the client involved with the most recent disciplinary action in 2000 in divorce proceedings after meeting him in a ballroom dancing class. The client’s wife committed suicide several months later, and Johnson handled the probate matters.

Within days of the death, Johnson began telling her client that “his deceased wife Jan had ‘come’ to her and that Jan’s ’spirit’ was ‘inside’ her and that she could communicate Jan’s thoughts,” according to the report. The client testified that Johnson pressured him to have a sexual relationship with her, although she told the investigator that the references to sex were coming from the deceased wife, not herself.

The State Bar has argued that Johnson should be disbarred not only because of her inappropriate conduct toward her client, in which she lied about channeling his deceased wife, but because she “continued those lies over an extended period in an effort to minimize her conduct,” according to the latest decision.

During her latest testimony before the disciplinary commission, Johnson said she misunderstood the channeling question posed during the prior proceedings and did not intentionally lie.

Little said the State Bar intends to file its appeal of the disciplinary commission’s recommended one-year suspension within a week.

Credit: Karen Sloan, The National Law Journal