recognizing that the court has authority to consider complaints of unauthorized practice of law and the power and responsibility to enjoin such activities
How later courts described this case
- recognizing that the court has authority to consider complaints of unauthorized practice of law and the power and responsibility to enjoin such activities
- collection agency was engaged in the unauthorized practice of law; “[W]hen it is asserted ... that one is engaging in the unauthorized practice of law before the court, it has [the] authority to consider the question and to dismiss plaintiffs suit[.]”
- practice of law embraces, inter alia, management of actions and proceedings on behalf of clients before judges and courts
- “Canon 3 of the Code of Professional Responsibility ... places upon all members of the bar a responsibility to assist in preventing the unauthorized practice of law.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
KELLY, Associate Judge
(concurring in the result):
The question of appellee’s standing, by way of a counterclaim, to seek an injunction against appellant’s unauthorized practice of the law is a troublesome one, for it appears that almost universally, in those cases which allow such suits for a permanent injunction, counsel are pursuing class actions in behalf of themselves and other affected members of the legal profession or are joined by a duly recognized bar association or grievance committee. Nevertheless, in New Jersey State Bar Ass’n v. Northern N. J. Mtg. Asso., 22 N.J. 184 , 123 A.2d 498, 504 (1956), where it was held that a bar association had standing to enjoin unauthorized practice of the law, but that individual attorneys may have no such standing, the court said:
Attorneys enjoy rights peculiar to themselves, not enjoyed by those outside the profession, but only as an incident to the public welfare. And because of the incidental nature of their right, as individual members of the bar they have no standing to complain in the absence of specific injuries to themselves arising from alleged illegal practice, and no basis for any claim of irreparable damage. . . . [Emphasis supplied.] 1
*601 It seems then, on the basis of settled authority, that appellee may not have brought an original suit in equity to enjoin appellant from the unauthorized practice of the law but that he could raise the issue as a defense to a suit against him for collection of a debt, there being at that time a showing of specific injury to himself. Once raised and decided, it is my opinion that in disposing of this issue the trial court was not limited to a dismissal of the complaint, or to holding appellant in contempt, but that it could in these unique circumstances permanently enjoin appellant from the unauthorized practice of the law either sua sponte or at appellee’s request.
. See also Touchy v. Houston Legal Foundation, 432 S.W.2d 690 (Tex.1968).