Hard To Find Attorney Gets Lengthy Suspension

The Florida Supreme Court rejected as unduly lenient a referee’s proposed sanction and ordered an attorney’s suspension for one year.

 …we reject Picon’s challenges to the sufficiency of the referee’s report and approve the referee’s findings of fact and recommendations of guilt. However, we disapprove the referee’s recommended discipline as too lenient  in light of the number of acts of client neglect committed by Picon and her prior disciplinary record. We instead impose a one-year suspension from the practice of law.

 The misconduct took place in three criminal matters and involved multiple failures to appear.

The referee also found that Picon frequently failed to notify the court and opposing counsel of conflicts in her schedule. Opposing counsel often attempted to reach Picon by phone to ascertain her whereabouts and whether or not she planned to attend a scheduled hearing. Such attempts, however, were often unsuccessful and voicemail messages could not be left for Picon because her inbox was routinely full. Also, judicial assistants and other court personnel would often go to great lengths to determine Picon’s whereabouts and whether she would be attending a hearing. Such lengths included court deputies utilizing the intercom system to contact each other in an attempt to ascertain Picon’s whereabouts and whether she would be attending a hearing.

The court rejected this contention

Picon argues that the report of referee in this case does not reflect the referee’s independent judgment and that the referee merely adopted the Bar’s proposed report of referee verbatim. As a general rule, a referee’s findings and recommendations must demonstrate independent decision-making. A referee is not precluded, however, from adopting one party’s proposed report of referee if the record reflects that the referee exercised independent decision-making in doing so.

The referee’s proposed 91-day suspension was insufficient

…Picon’s misconduct is particularly egregious in that it resulted in a bench warrant being issued in the Jennings case for her client and her client’s incarceration for several days. In Fla. Bar v. Gass, 153 So. 3d 886 (Fla. 2014), an attorney, among other things, advised his clients to not comply with a subpoena to attend a deposition, failed to attend a scheduled deposition and court hearing on behalf of his clients, and failed to inform his clients that an order directing them to show cause why they should not be held in contempt had been issued. Id. at 888-90. The attorney’s misconduct ultimately resulted in a bench warrant being issued for his clients and the incarceration of his clients for three days. Id. The Court disapproved the referee’s recommended sixty-day suspension and, noting the particularly egregious nature of the attorney’s misconduct, imposed a one-year suspension. Id. at 892-93.

(Mike Frisch)