TN Supreme Court rejects proposed resolution of disciplinary case as too lenient

This week sees a rare instance of media publicity regarding something perceived to itself be a rare event (but for which it is difficult to prove that the perception is also reality) – the rejection of a negotiated conditional guilty plea in a lawyer discipline case that had been approved by a hearing panel, and the BPR.  The Knoxville daily newspaper has the story about the Court’s rejection of a deal for a Knoxville lawyer who would, under the terms of the conditional guilty plea, have been suspended for 1 year, with 30 days of active suspension and 11 months of probation thereafter.  Again, thanks to the Knoxville News Sentinel, you can also take a look at the Court’s order indicating the punishment should be increased here.

Although all aspects of the record of disciplinary proceedings are technically public after the BPR files a formal petition for discipline, they are not all that easily accessible compared to many other kinds of court records.  So, traditionally, unless you are one of the lawyers involved in the process (as the target or as someone representing the target), you’re not all that likely to learn about the outcomes of the proceedings until they have wrapped up and the BPR puts out a press release about the discipline imposed.  As a result, all that many of us who practice in this area have to go on is our own experience in representing clients, mine has led me to believe that instances where the Court ends up rejecting agreed discipline that passed muster with a hearing panel and the BPR is a rare event.

This particular instance likely came to light given (1) the overlap with some federal court proceedings flowing from a simultaneous, but secret, investigation of this lawyer by the U.S. DOJ, and (2) the fact that this lawyer is currently involved as a lawyer for clients in some high-profile litigation going on in Tennessee.

The underlying allegations involve a sexual relationship between the lawyer and an indigent, allegedly addicted client the lawyer had been representing as court-appointed counsel and a claim by the lawyer to suffer himself from sexual addiction.  As good a time as any to remind lawyers in Tennessee, that instead of having a rule on this issue patterned after the ABA Model Rule 1.8(j) that is limited to clients (and would not for example have reached this kind of conduct if the relationship had been with the client’s spouse), we treat a lawyer’s sexual relationships under RPC 1.7 as a subset of “personal interest” conflicts that can create a material limitation on the ability to represent a client and elaborate at length on the problems created in Comments [12], [12a], and [12b].