A Permanent Disbarment

An attorney admitted in 1973 has been permanently disbarred by the Ohio supreme Court for misconduct in three matters.

The court rejected his claim of depression as mitigating the theft of funds.

The complaint alleged that Davies settled a personal-injury case without his clients’ authorization and never distributed the funds, failed to competently represent another client in a dental-malpractice case, and failed to disclose a conflict of interest and committed other ethical violations in the process of representing a client in the administration of an estate.

He admitted the charges.

Davies has filed objections to the board’s findings and recommendation, disputing some details of several of the factual findings but not disputing that he committed the disciplinary violations. Davies relies on his lengthy undiagnosed depression as the reason for the change in his behavior after competently representing clients for almost 30 years and argues that the board should have acknowledged that his psychiatrist’s letter accurately explained that his actions were due to his depression. He states that he did not offer this evidence of his mental illness as an excuse for his actions. However, even if he had attempted to make that argument, the evidence he submitted is insufficient to sustain his burden of proving mental-health mitigation.

Thus

Here, misappropriation is just one of Davies’s many violations. And although the presumption of a specific sanction may be overcome if “an abundance of mitigating evidence” warrants a different result, Disciplinary Counsel v. Markijohn, 99 Ohio St.3d 489, 2003-Ohio-4129, 794 N.E.2d 24, ¶ 8, there is no such evidence here. The compelling interest of protecting the public requires that the strictest discipline be imposed under these circumstances.

Accordingly, David Harrison Davies is permanently disbarred from the practice of law in Ohio.

(Mike Frisch)