Opinion

Office of Disciplinary Counsel v. Levine

  • 582 Pa. 459
  • 872 A.2d 1138
  • 2005 Pa. LEXIS 901
Court
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Filed
Apr 27, 2005
Status
Published
Author
Cappy
On the bench
Cappy, Nigro, Newman, Saylor, Eakin, Baer, Castille
Cited by
0 cases
Authority
More cited than 7.4%

The opinion

Chief Justice CAPPY

dissenting.

I respectfully dissent from the majority’s imposition of a suspension for a period of five years, and would disbar Respondent. Initially, I note that Respondent has failed to satisfy his burden of demonstrating that his psychiatric disorder was a substantial causal factor in his misconduct pursuant to Office of Disciplinary Counsel v. Braun, 520 Pa. 157 , 553 A.2d 894 (1989). The nature of his misconduct—affixing a judge’s signature to an order approving the settlement of a claim and submitting the same to an insurance carrier—is of the most egregious nature. Respondent further attempted to conceal his misconduct by filing a motion with the court in which he falsely asserted that the trial judge had signed the order, but that the order had been inadvertently misplaced. Under these circumstances, where the very nature of the legal *461 process has been compromised, the appropriate sanction is disbarment.

Justice SAYLOR joins this dissenting statement.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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