“Ay, ye fekin’ eejit, I’ll be reefing ye with me shillelagh!” TRANSLATION: “Disbar me, quick!”

Yesterday I posted on Facebook a real news story about an Australian teen who plotted to plant explosives on a kangaroo and sent it hopping to a terrorism target. This story, about a Louisiana lawyer who is either trying to get disbarred (with apparent success) or has lost his mind struck me about the same way. Everything seems to spinning out of control.

The Louisiana Bar Disciplinary Board  has recommended permanent disbarment for lawyer Ashton O’Dwyer Jr. This passage of its report particularly appealed to me: During a June 2012 hearing by the committee, O’Dwyer “had to be admonished for brandishing about his shillelagh, his action clearly inappropriate for a disciplinary proceeding.”

Clearly.

That’s just a sample. Here’s a random selection of some examples of how this spunky Irishman has behaved,  from the “How To Get Disbarred” handbook.

O’Dwyer first ran afoul of the ethics rules  in federal court in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina litigation, when he engaged in personal attacks on the judge and opposing counsel, and engaged in other irregularities “prejudicial to the administration of justice.”  He was suspended by that court in 2008 for his  conduct. In response, he…

….filed a “Declaration of His Intentionally Contemptuous Non-Compliance with the Court’s Order”…

….called the Louisiana Supreme Court a “bunch of kids”…

…referred to the chief justice with a “sexual and offensive nickname,” according to hearing board’s findings of fact.

O’Dwyer then sent an email to the disciplinary counsel in which he implausibly denied the use of racially disparaging terms, which the bar found to be “disingenuous.” Then he sent another email the same day calling the disciplinary counsel a “pimp,” a “puppet,”  “Uncle Tom” and an “Oreo.”

Nothing racially disparaging about any of that, right? All of this got him disbarred for a minimum of two years. Continue reading →