thirty-day suspension for secretly recording former client to implicate him in drug dealing
How later courts described this case
- thirty-day suspension for secretly recording former client to implicate him in drug dealing
- questioning advisory opinion’s broad application to even private recordings
- interpreting DR 1-102(A)(4), the predecessor to rule 32:8.4(c)
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CARTER, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in result. I believe that, irrespective of whether attorney Mollman communicated a disclaimer of any potential attorney-client relationship, Johnson nevertheless was relying on Mollman for legal advice. For that reason, he undoubtedly made statements that otherwise would not have been forthcoming. I believe that Mollman’s conduct therefore violated DR 4-101(B) (lawyer shall not knowingly use the confidence or secret of a client to lawyer’s own advantage).
*174 I do not, however, share the court’s reluctance to squarely pass on the validity of ABA Formal Opinion 337 or Committee on Professional Ethics and Conduct Formal Opinion 83-16 (1982) vis-a-vis the Iowa Code of Professional Responsibility for Lawyers. I believe that, in most instances, the practices that those opinions prohibit more nearly foster a search for truth and honest dealing than do the prophylactic rules that those opinions lay down. Consequently, as presently written, I would not approve those opinions as guidelines to which Iowa lawyers must give allegiance.