Breathtaking Contempt For Courts Precludes Reinstatement

A petition for reinstatement was denied by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Jonas graduated from law school in 1974. That same year, he was admitted to the bar of Pennsylvania, and was then admitted to the bar of New Jersey in 1975. He engaged in private practice in Pennsylvania, and then in New Jersey.

In 1987, Jonas took and passed the Maine bar exam and was admitted to the Maine bar.  Shortly thereafter, he and his wife separated. A contentious and protracted series of divorce proceedings followed, spanning multiple decades and several jurisdictions. It is Jonas’s conduct during these proceedings that ultimately led to his professional disciplinary troubles. 

The Board of Bar Overseers noted that “[u]ntil 1995, his law practice was primarily in New Jersey, where he was an active and successful civil litigator, with a number of large commercial clients.”

The misconduct was committed after the attorney’s divorce in 1990.

In 1995, a series of decisions that Jonas had made was discovered, changing the course of his life. Apparently tired of being required to pay what he considered to be an unfair amount of spousal support, Jonas took action to undermine the divorce judgment, avoid his support obligations, misrepresent his financial status, and interfere with [ex-wife] Linda’s contact with the children.

The court

…Jonas attempted to explain his actions in 1995, 1996, and 1997 by asserting that he believed the [New Jersey] court was either biased against him or actually corrupt, and that he was suffering from depression and anxiety. If Jonas had not compounded the lack of judgment and integrity he demonstrated from 1995 until 1997 through his actions over the next twenty-plus years, I would have little trouble accepting Jonas’s explanation and his acknowledgement of responsibility and remorse. As the following recitation shows, however, Jonas continued with his single-minded and grossly erroneous belief that he did not have to comply with court orders. His admission that he is “persistent and bull-headed,” although not inaccurate, does not justify his subsequent behavior…

The historical facts reproduced here represent just a small and simplified sampling of the most significant moments in Jonas’s litigation history; that history displays a complexity that anyone would be loathe to describe in full. In total, dozens of jurists in the trial, intermediate appellate, and appellate courts of five states and eight federal jurisdictions for more than two decades have considered and rejected Jonas’s arguments regarding his divorce.

The story involved actions he had taken from Montana to Florida with stops in between and a persistent disregard for court rulings.

In sum

That Jonas has, from time to time, found lawyers to make his arguments for him does not insulate his actions. Whether with or without counsel, he has demonstrated a level of contempt for courts and their authority that is breathtaking. In sum, Jonas’s litigation history, though all relating to his personal affairs, reflects a pattern of conduct that could not possibly meet any definition of integrity. Indeed, a small sampling of the terms that have been used to describe Jonas and his filings and actions in court include the following: vexatious, defiant, subversive, disruptive, guerilla warfare, wasteful, single-minded, adamant, obstinate, dogged retaliatory, duplicative, abusive, especially egregious, unnecessary, unrelenting, specious, deliberate, frivolous, bad faith, improper, ill-advised, retributive, ongoing, expensive, impertinent, delaying, invalid, needless, unsupported, and contemptuous. Jonas has mischaracterized, misrepresented, refused to appear, failed to obey, feigned ignorance, manipulated, and harassed his way through the last twenty-five years, and in every such incident, he has ignored his own conduct, failed to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and expressed no remorse or contrition.

Notably, the Board of Bar Overseers had favored reinstatement, finding misconduct to be “very unlikely to be repeated in the future.” 

He was suspended for six months and until further order in New Jersey.  Pennsylvania suspended him for six months and placed him on inactive status in 2014. (Mike Frisch)