Professions

Now THIS Is an Unethical Lawyer!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Tennessee Supreme Court this month disbarred a Nashville lawyer, Brian Philip Manookian, for habitual unethical conduct that I have a hard time believing that any lawyer would dare to engage in even once. Manookian, wrote the Court, “engaged in this long pattern of intimidating and degrading conduct” to succeed in a medical liability case, the Tennessee Supreme Court said. His goal was to coerce opposing lawyers “into standing down to avoid personal humiliation and emotional distress for them or their families. A business model of sorts, based on fear….To say that Mr. Manookian engaged in multiple offenses is to understate,” the state supreme court continued. “Despite lectures, fines, sanctions and suspensions from judge after judge, Mr. Manookian did not choose merely to continue engaging in misconduct—each time he received the expected negative reaction to his behavior, he responded by escalating it.”

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Alan Page, Esq.: Role Model

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

After being so critical of the NFL’s ethics and business practices, I feel obligated to highlight the impressive example of Alan Page, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee (in 1988) who does not suffer from CTE and who exemplifies the kind of role model American youth should know about and emulate. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had no idea that Page had gone on from his NFL exploits with the Minnesota Vikings to, among other things,

  • Establish and oversee the Page Education Foundation, which award Page Scholarships to black students who are then obligated  to mentor younger children. The foundation has awarded nearly 9,000 scholarships and taken in approximately $16 million in grants.
  • Earn a law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1978, while he was still playing football.
  • Practice employment law in a law firm,  join the Attorney General’s office, and eventually became assistant attorney general.
  • Get elected to the Minnesota Supreme Court four times,  sitting for 22 years on the court before  hitting the mandatory retirement age of 70.
  • Write inspirational children’s books with his daughter, Kamie Page.

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In Which I Comment on That Absurd Presidential Ranking Poll Without Reading It, Because My Head Doesn’t Need Any More Explosions, Thanks…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Several readers and friends sent me this new poll, described as the product of historians in some sources and a the opinion of political science organization in others. It looks to me like the latter is more correct: the thing was the brainchild (I’m being generous here) of Brandon Rottinghaus and Justin Vaughn, both professors of political science, and that’s what their degrees and credentials are in as well. Calling them “historians” is misleading, but that’s what the Times and others sources are doing. Political science is not the same academic field as history, though of course it involves the study of history. I would never call myself a professional historian. My degrees are in American Government ( the College That Must Not Be Named’s version of political science) and law.

I was tempted to dissect the poll, which famously ranks the spectacularly incompetent Joe Biden as the 14th best President and Donald Trump dead last as the worst, in order to add to previous posts in which I described how ruinously political and untrustworthy the field of history has become. I decided that this would be unfair, since these biased history dummies are not a group of historians. I also decided that such an obviously partisan and politically motivated poll was not worth dignifying by treating it as anything but.

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Clearly, #MeToo Never Quite Got Its Message Across

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Baltimore judge Kevin M. Wilson is facing an ethics hearing in May after a female lawyer accused him of inappropriate and unwelcome touching at a bar association event at the Maryland Club in May of last year. Thecomplaining victim says that when she stopped at a table where Wilson and another judge were seated, she felt Wilson’s hand rub her leg up and down. Two lawyers witnessed this, as well as hearing the complainant tell Wilson that his behavior was inappropriate. The judge moved his hand away, but then, also allegedly, put his hand back on the attorney’s leg, moved his hand up under her skirt, and touched her buttocks.

The event was called “Join Our District Court Judges for Practice Tips on Tap,” so I guess maybe Wilson was just…tapping. 

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“Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” An Ethics Movie That Seems Disturbingly Relevant Today

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

How I missed the 1995 HBO film “Indictment: the McMartin Trial” for almost 30 years, I don’t know, but I did. The Oliver Stone produced legal drama about the insane events surrounding what turned out to be the start of a nation-wide freak-out over supposed Satan worship and widespread child abuse at day-care centers is unusually accurate for a docudrama. For this reason it is also infuriating. How could this have happened even once?

In August of 1983, the mother of a 2-year-old boy phoned the Manhattan Beach (California) Police Dept. claiming that her son had been sexually abused at the family-run McMartin Pre-School. That accusation prompted a series of sensational and inflammatory reports from an unscrupulous broadcast journalist (or “journalist,” for short) at WABC-TV. It also prompted the police to contact other parents with children at the school to ask if their children had been molested. Those children were, in turn, interviewed by a crusading social worker named Kee MacFarlane, who used controversial techniques to persuade the young children that they had seen and experienced terrible things, escalating from sexual abuse to having to witness ritual rapes and human sacrifices. (This was one of the seminal cases in the psychiatry profession’s “implanted memories” scandal.)

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Florida Becomes the First Bar to Issue Ethics Guidance on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

After seeking comments last fall on a proposed advisory opinion to its members on the ethical use of artificial intelligence by lawyers in the practice of law, the Florida Bar’s review committee has voted unanimously to issue Florida Bar ethics opinion 24-1, the first such opinion by any U.S. jurisdiction about the assuredly revolutionary changes in legal practice and the concomitant perils that lie ahead as a result of AI technology. The advisory opinion’s summary:

“Lawyers may use generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) in the practice of law but must protect the confidentiality of client information, provide accurate and competent services, avoid improper billing practices, and comply with applicable restrictions on lawyer advertising. Lawyers must ensure that the confidentiality of client information is protected when using generative AI by researching the program’s policies on data retention, data sharing, and self- learning. Lawyers remain responsible for their work product and professional judgment and must develop policies and practices to verify that the use of generative AI is consistent with the lawyer’s ethical obligations. Use of generative AI does not permit a lawyer to engage in improper billing practices such as double-billing. Generative AI chatbots that communicate with clients or third parties must comply with restrictions on lawyer advertising and must include a disclaimer indicating that the chatbot is an AI program and not a lawyer or employee of the law firm. Lawyers should be mindful of the duty to maintain technological competence and educate themselves regarding the risks and benefits of new technology.”

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Ethics Observations On The 2023 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Not a surprise, but still an ominous trend...

As usual, those polled were asked, “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low or very low?”

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Now THAT’s an Incompetent Lawyer! “Now What?” Asks His Death Row Inmate Client…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Joseph Gamboa, marked for execution in Texas, is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to save his life. His argument is that a court-appointed lawyer was so inept that he killed his chance to challenge his murder conviction in federal court. The Supreme Court is will examine this week whether justice was done in Gamboa’s case even though his attorney made one botch after another. Indeed, he could hardly have done worse if he had the Ghostbusters’ lawyer (Rick Moranis) from “Ghostbusters 2.”

Gamboa was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for two murders during a robbery, but he swears that he is innocent. His court-appointed lawyer, John J. Ritenour Jr., met with Gamboa only once, the condemned man argues in his SCOTUS brief, then filed a habeas petition. At that single meeting, Gamboa says he brought documents that indicated prosecutors withheld potentially exculpatory evidence (a Brady violation!) that another man had committed the killings. Ritenour did not take the documents, Gamboa’s brief says. In a sworn statement, Gamboa stated that “Mr. Ritenour told me that he had read the state court record in my case and believed I was guilty.”

It took Ritenour almost a year to filed the habeus corpus petition, and it was a hack job. The petition was cut-and-pasted from an earlier one for another client, even repeating the same typos and grammatical errors. It even featured the name of the other client, Obie Weather, where the lawyer hadn’t quite finished proof-reading. Nor was the document signed by Gamboa, a requirement. Gamboa says that the petition did not include any of the arguments they had discussed…understandable, since the document was basically copied from a different case.

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Fani Willis’s Sermon

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is beginning to look like Fani Willis, Georgia’s African-American Democrat Fulton County prosecutor who pledged to “get” Donald Trump, really is involved in a serious conflict of interest involving the case and even criminal conduct. The mainstream media is taking notice, it is no longer a “right wing conspiracy theory,” and most interestingly, Willis has not denied the allegations, which appeared in a court filing.

The New York Times published a story headlined “Atlanta D.A. Defends Qualifications of Outside Lawyer She Hired for Trump Case/At a historic Black church, Fani T. Willis pushed back against an accusation that Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she brought on, was unqualified for the job” in which we learn that Willis spoke yesterday before the congregation of one of the oldest Black churches in Atlanta, which had invited her to be the keynote speaker for a service dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She did not mention the details of allegations that she is in an intimate relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired in 2021 for the Trump-getting, and has earned more than $650,000 in the job to date with some of the lucre benefiting her directly. Instead, she said in part,

“Wait a minute, God! You did not tell me,” she added, “as a woman of color it would not matter what I did — my motive, my talent, my ability and my character would be constantly attacked….A divorced single mom who doesn’t belong to the right social groups, who doesn’t necessarily come from the right family, doesn’t have the right pedigree — the assignment was just too high for lowly me. All I brought to the table, God, is my mind, my heart, my work ethic, my undying love for people and the community.”

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“Baseball Super-Agent Scott Boras Has Another Super-Conflict And There Is No Excuse For It,” The Sequel

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sharp-eyed Ethics Alarms readers who pay attention to my baseball posts might recognize this one. It is like the most inexcusable lazy Hollywood franchise film, a sequel that is nearly identical to the original. I’m going to see how much of the post’s predecessor I can duplicate without having to change anything

Twelve years ago, Ethics Alarms began a post about baseball agents in general and Scott Boras in particular engaging in a flaming conflict of interest that harmed their player clients this way…

Baseball’s super-agent Scott Boras has his annual off-season conflict of interest problem, and as usual, neither Major League Baseball, nor the Players’ Union, nor the legal profession, not his trusting but foolish clients seem to care. Nevertheless, he is operating under circumstances that make it impossible for him to be fair to his clients.

I could have written that paragraph today. Nothing has changed. Literally nothing: as baseball general managers  huddle with player agents in baseball’s off-season and sign players to mind-blowing contracts, the unethical tolerance of players agents indulging in and profiting from a classic conflict of interest continues without protest or reform.

I may be the only one who cares about the issue. I first wrote about it here, on a baseball website. I carried on my campaign to Ethics Alarms, discussing the issue in 2010, 2011 (that’s where the linked quote above comes from), 2014, 2019, and in 2019 again,  and last year, in 2022. There is no publication or website that has covered the issue as thoroughly as this one, and the unethical nature of the practice is irrefutable. But I might as well be shouting in outer space, where no one can hear you scream. The conflict of interest, which is throbbingly obvious and easy to address, sits stinking up the game. Continue reading →