# In Re Bailey

> District of Columbia Court of Appeals · September 15, 2005 · 883 A.2d 106

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9746483

## Case

- **Full name:** In Re Samuel BAILEY, Jr., Respondent. a Member of the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (Bar Registration No. 384974)
- **Court:** District of Columbia Court of Appeals
- **Decided:** September 15, 2005
- **Citations:** 883 A.2d 106; 2005 D.C. App. LEXIS 485; 2005 WL 2319782
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Schwelb
- **Judges:** Schwelb, Reid, Ferren
- **Cited by:** 41 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9746483

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that if a contract “has more than one reasonable interpretation and therefore is ambiguous, then the court — after admitting probative extrinsic evidence — must determine what a reasonable person in the position of the parties would have thought the disputed languag…

## Opinion text

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the sanction that the court imposes and with much of my colleagues’ analysis, including the conclusion that Mr. Bailey engaged in negligent misappropriation. I do not join the opinion, however, because in my view, much that the court has written is dictum addressing two questions the resolution of which, in the final analysis, can have no effect on the outcome of the case.
The court focuses at some length on whether the authorization executed by the client effected an assignment of settlement proceeds to Dr. Garmon and whether Dr. Garmon was an expert witness and therefore had a lien on the recovery. These are not easy questions, and the court answers each of them in the negative, or favorably to Mr. Bailey. Any encouragement that this may have brought Mr. Bailey was short-lived, however, for my colleagues then proceed to hold — and I agree — that Mr. Bailey’s conduct constituted misappropriation, albeit negligent misappropriation.
Obviously, the court’s resolution of the “assignment” and “expert witness” issues makes no difference to its disposition of the case. If the authorization had effected an assignment, and if Dr. Garmon were entitled to a lien as an expert witness, the court would still conclude, perhaps a forti-ori, that misappropriation occurred. In *124 my opinion, we should not ordinarily undertake to resolve difficult issues which do not affect the end result. Regardless of how diligently counsel have argued these issues and crossed rhetorical swords on them, the court’s resolution of them is still dictum. Perhaps the court’s discussion will provide “guidance” to the Board and to counsel, but in my view, we should resist the temptation to provide guidance by dictum.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9746483. Public record. Not legal advice.