December 7, 2011 4:13 PM
Legal Blotter: When Lawyers Become the Accused
Posted by Brian Baxter
As 2011 draws to a close, the news about attorneys and former attorneys accused of everything from ethical lapses to serious crimes is beginning to pile up.
Among the most prominent attorneys on the defensive these days: Ohio attorney general Marc Dann, who stepped down from that post in 2008 after admitting to an extramarital affair with a subordinate. Dann isnow fighting to hold onto his law license after pleading guilty last year to ethics violations stemming from filing false financial statements and unlawfully compensating some employees.
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reported this week that a grievance and disciplinary board of the Ohio Supreme Court has recommended that Dann’s law license be suspended for six months. Dann, who was previously reprimanded in a separate matter in 2004 and now has his own private practice in Cleveland, testified for about an hour last Thursday before a three-member panel appointed by the Buckeye State's top court, according to The Plain Dealer. That panel, made up of a lawyer and two judges, is expected to deliver its full disciplinary recommendation to the court in either December or February.
Meanwhile, in a case that originated closer to The Am Law Daily's Manhattan homebase, former Crowell & Moring counsel Douglas Arntsen has agreed to be extradited from Hong Kong to face state charges in New York that he stole millions of dollars from client escrow funds, according to sibling publication the New York Law Journal.
The Am Law Daily reported in September on a lawsuit filed against Crowell by a real estate client of the firm's who claimed that Arntsen had absconded with $5.5 million in escrow money before being apprehended in Hong Kong. Reuters recently reported that Crowell may have had concerns about Arntsen as far back as this summer. Crowell—which has been cooperating with authorities and told the NYLJthat it "intends to honor its obligations in this matter"—has since been hit with another suit by a company claiming that the firm owes it $1 million in funds embezzled by Arntsen.
In another alleged fraud scheme, the SEC announced Tuesday that it has filed civil charges against Brynee Baylor, a name partner at Washington, D.C.–based Baylor & Jackson. The Blog of Legal Times, a sibling publication, reports that Baylor is accused of participating in a plot to steal more than $2 million in investor funds that she and a client then spent on Jimmy Choo shoes, luxury cars, and a trip to the Bahamas, among other things. Baylor declined The BLT's request for comment.
Former partners at Hogan Lovells and British firm Mishcon de Reyaare also embroiled in fraud cases, with the former hit with criminal charges by U.K. authorities on Monday and the latter convicted in a London court on the same day, according to reports by U.K. publication Legal Week.
The Am Law Daily previously reported on the beginnings of one of those cases in May, when Hogan Lovells dismissed London-based litigation partner Christopher Grierson, a former member of the partnership council at legacy firm Lovells, after an internal investigation uncovered evidence that he had claimed more than $1.6 million in bogus expenses. The firm reported Grierson, whose clients included the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme, to London police in June, according to the Financial Times. Now,Legal Week reports, Grierson has been officially charged with four accounts of false accounting in defrauding Hogan Lovells out of its funds.
Another U.K. lawyer, former Mishcon property partner Kevin Steele, was found guilty of forgery and two fraud offenses in London's Southwark Crown Court on Monday, according to Legal Week. Steele wascharged by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office last year, along with a former property developer client, with conspiring to fraudulently obtain a loan totaling nearly $30 million.
Finally, though it may seem otherwise given recent headlines, assistant coaches for college sports teams aren't alone in facing child sexual abuse allegations. Former Debevoise & Plimpton associate Kenneth Schneider was sentenced this week by a federal judge in Pennsylvania to 15 years in prison for forcing a Russian teenager to be his sex slave,according to a report by sibling publication The National Law Journal.
Schneider, who worked out of Debevoise’s Moscow office until he left the firm in February 2000, was arrested in Cyprus and charged with sex tourism in March 2010. A prominent philanthropist and founder and president of the nonprofit Apogee Foundation for arts education and training, Schneider was convicted in October 2010 of transporting a person for criminal sexual conduct and traveling for the purpose of having sex with a minor.
The NLJ reports that U.S. district judge Juan Sanchez called Schneider a "monster" who destroyed the life of a Bolshoi Ballet Academy student whom Schneider met in Moscow in 1998 when the boy was 12. The relationship escalated over the next eight years, with the pair traveling back and forth between Philadelphia and Moscow. Philadelphia’sStradley Ronon Stevens & Young represented Schneider. (The Careerist has more on Schneider's case.)
And on Friday, the Kansas Supreme Court disbarred a former federal prosecutor convicted of statutory sodomy and related offenses,according to the Legal Profession Blog. In a 13-page per curiam opinion, the court held that evidence established at a criminal trial for Eric Tolen demonstrated that he had engaged in illicit sexual acts with teenage boys by enticing them with gifts.
Tolen, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri from 1987 through until his termination in 1999, was sentenced in September 2008 to 65 years in prison. Already disbarred in Missouri, Tolen was sued last year by two of his former molestation victimsseeking $10 million in damages. In March a state court in St. Louisordered Tolen to pay the two victims $30 million from any of his remaining assets.
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