disbarment ordered for attorney who obtained clients’ signatures and placed them on a settlement draft without their knowledge; mishandled and commingled client funds for a period of two years; and misrepresented to Disciplinary Counsel the mishandling, despite mitigating evidence of recovery from alcoholism; paying back clients; retaining an accountant to monitor and maintain integrity of escrow account; and the agreement of attorney’s psychiatrist and several practicing attorneys to monitor his practice
How later courts described this case
- disbarment ordered for attorney who obtained clients’ signatures and placed them on a settlement draft without their knowledge; mishandled and commingled client funds for a period of two years; and misrepresented to Disciplinary Counsel the mishandling, despite mitigating evidence of recovery from alcoholism; paying back clients; retaining an accountant to monitor and maintain integrity of escrow account; and the agreement of attorney’s psychiatrist and several practicing attorneys to monitor his practice
- conduct of repeated commingling and conversion warrants disbarment
- converting and commingling client funds with personal funds warrants disbarment
- “[W]e are mindful of the need for [J-97-2024] - 30 consistency in the results reached in disciplinary cases so that similar misconduct is not punished in radically different ways”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
LARSEN, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result and would adopt a per se rule providing for disbarment when a lawyer steals a client’s money. Matter of Duffield, 479 Pa. 471 , 388 A.2d 1028 (1978) (Larsen, J., dissenting).