No More Monkey Business

The Georgia Supreme Court has disbarred an attorney for misconduct in civil litigation.

The attorney achieved a level of notoriety for conduct described in this post from the July 2008 ABA Journal.

An Atlanta divorce lawyer has been banned from the entire fifth floor of the DeKalb County courthouse following an incident in which he called an African-American court staffer a “little monkey.”

Two judges cited the remark in an order that bans lawyer Paul Koehler from the floor where the judges have chambers unless he is accompanied by a sheriff’s deputy, reports the Fulton County Daily Report. The judges’ order says the behavior was “racist and disrespectful.”

Koehler, who is white, admitted he made the remark in an interview with the Fulton County Daily Report and said it was not intended to be a racial comment. He has since written letters of apology.

Koehler told the publication he thought he was speaking to someone he knew, but apparently the woman was a court staffer. “It was a pretty black lady that I thought I knew and was joking with,” he said.

“I made a comment like, ‘How you doing, you little monkey?’ or something like that,” said Koehler. “I had no intent to make it a racial comment. … I think every day, when I’m playing with my granddaughter or I’m playing with someone else I use that word, monkey.

This did not help in the bar discipline case

Koehler continues to state that he has done nothing warranting the imposition of the suggested punishment. Koehler’s arguments against the specific accusations of the Formal Complaint are largely unresponsive to the claims presented there.

The attorney was admitted in 1963. (Mike Frisch)