Utah Supreme Court: “Not All Misappropriation Is Created Equal”

The Utah Supreme Court affirmed a suspension for dishonesty in a case where an attorney had bartered legal services with two clients for home improvements and deprived his firm of its fees.

Attorney Joseph Barrett exchanged legal services for construction work on his home and yard, thereby depriving his law firm, Snow, Christensen & Martineau P.C. (SCM), of the legal fees accrued from those cases. The district court suspended Mr. Barrett from the practice of law after it concluded that Mr. Barrett’s conduct violated rule 8.4(c) of the Utah Rules of Professional Conduct. The Office of Professional Conduct (OPC) appealed, urging us to hold that the intentional or knowing misappropriation of firm funds, like the intentional or knowing misappropriation of client funds, creates a presumption of disbarment. Mr. Barrett cross-appealed, arguing that the district court’s factual findings were clearly erroneous and a result of bias and that suspension was too harsh a sanction. We affirm the district court in part, reverse in part, and uphold the sanction of suspension.

The story

The misconduct allegations in this case stem from three independent situations: two involving legal services Mr. Barrett provided to clients in exchange for construction work on his home and yard, and one involving Mr. Barrett’s reimbursement request for a phone call with a potential client.

With respect to the first situation, Mr. Barrett began providing legal services to Richard Williams in June 2007 when Mr. Williams retained SCM and Mr. Barrett to represent his son in a criminal matter. Over the next three years, Mr. Barrett worked on that case, a collection matter for Mr. Williams’s company, and new criminal matters for Mr. Williams’s son. In June 2010, Mr. Barrett requested that the firm write off over $7,000 from Mr. Williams’s account. Around that time, Mr. Williams’s brother-in-law began building a wrought-iron railing for Mr. Barrett’s home, but he was unable to finish it. In July 2010, Mr. Williams wrote a check to Mr. Barrett for $3,500, which Mr. Barrett deposited into his personal account. According to Mr. Barrett, Mr. Williams proposed that his brother-in-law work on the railing as a “kind gesture” and Mr. Williams insisted on paying Mr. Barrett $3,500 so he could hire someone else to finish the job. Mr. Barrett claims that he wrote off Mr. Williams’s bills as a professional courtesy so Mr. Williams would continue to refer clients to Mr. Barrett and because he believed it was the compassionate thing to do. But by 2012, of the $8,612.07 that SCM billed to Mr. Williams’s account, Mr. Barrett had written off $7,912.07. And Mr. Williams had paid SCM only $700 while paying Mr. Barrett personally $3,500…

The second situation involves legal services Mr. Barrett provided to David Petersen. Mr. Barrett began legal work for Mr. Petersen in November 2010, when Mr. Petersen hired Mr. Barrett’s firm to represent him in a custody case. Several months later, Mr. Petersen started building a shed at Mr. Barrett’s home. Shortly afterward, Mr. Barrett requested that the firm write off about half of Mr. Petersen’s bill. Over the next couple of months, Mr. Barrett requested that SCM write off the rest of Mr. Petersen’s bill, and the firm refunded his $2,500 retainer. Mr. Barrett paid Mr. Petersen approximately $5,000 for the shed, which had cost Mr. Petersen $15,170.63 to build. In all, Mr. Barrett wrote off $8,913.54 from Mr. Petersen’s account at SCM. Mr. Barrett stated that he wrote off Mr. Petersen’s bills and refunded his retainer because he believed Mr. Petersen would be unable to pay and needed the money to visit his son. Mr. Petersen, however, testified that he had an agreement with Mr. Barrett to build the shed in exchange for legal services.

The third and final situation arose in January 2012 when Mr. Barrett requested reimbursement for a business development lunch in California that he did not attend. Mr. Barrett’s wife attended the lunch, and Mr. Barrett stated that he discussed business matters with a potential client over a phone call that took place during the lunch.

The firm confronted him over billing issues and reported him to the Bar.

The district court found misconduct and ordered suspension.

The district court concluded that Mr. Barrett’s actions constituted “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation,” but, given that Mr. Barrett did not misappropriate client funds, concluded that “disbarment . . . [was] not mandated in this case.” After considering the duty that Mr. Barrett violated and Mr. Barrett’s mental state, and weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the court imposed a 150-day suspension, which both parties appeal.

The court here rejected the attorney’s vigorous attack on the district court’s findings.

As to sanction

We have frequently stated that intentional or knowing misappropriation of client funds creates a presumption of disbarment under this section, noting that “it strikes at the very foundation of the trust and honesty that are indispensable to the functioning of the attorney-client relationship and, indeed, to the functioning of the legal profession itself.” In re Discipline of Babilis, 951 P.2d 207, 217 (Utah 1997); see also In re Discipline of Corey, 2012 UT 21, ¶ 21 & n.9, 274 P.3d 972. In its brief to this court, the OPC asked us to extend this presumption to all acts of intentional or knowing misappropriation of firm funds. At oral argument, the OPC pressed the stronger position that we have already recognized that misappropriation of firm funds is a presumptively disbarrable offense, citing our opinion in In re Discipline of Ince, 957 P.2d 1233 (Utah 1998).

In Ince, we imposed disbarment after finding that the attorney misappropriated money from both his firm and his clients, thereby engaging in criminal conduct and actions that “seriously adversely reflect on [the lawyer’s] fitness to practice law.” Id. at 1237. We noted that whether “the majority of the money [the attorney] stole came from his law firm rather than from a client neither changes the essential nature of his conduct nor makes it any less serious,” and we therefore adopted the position that intentional misappropriation of firm funds merits disbarment. Id. But that language was merely dicta, which we now reject, noting that Ince’s holding relied on facts that are not applicable to Mr. Barrett’s case.

…we clarify today that not all misappropriation is created equal. Misappropriation of firm funds does not “undermine the foundations of the profession and the public confidence” in the same way that misusing client funds does. Id. A presumption of disbarment for intentional or knowing misappropriation of client funds is necessary to protect the “foundations of the profession and the public confidence that is essential to the functioning of our legal system,” and we have placed it among the top of our sanctionable offenses as a way of putting attorneys on notice that such actions are “always indefensible.” Id. But the same policy concerns do not arise where no client money is at issue, and we want to leave no doubt in stating that intentional or knowing misappropriation of client funds is intolerable. Thus, we will not extend Ince to mean that where an attorney has misappropriated firm funds but not client funds, the presumption of disbarment must apply. In this case, Mr. Barrett did not misappropriate client funds. We therefore decline to extend Ince’s ruling to hold that disbarment is the appropriate sanction whenever an attorney misappropriates firm funds, and we find that Mr. Barrett’s knowing and intentional misappropriation of firm funds does not fall within rule 14-605(a)(3).

Thus no “death penalty”

Although Mr. Barrett’s misappropriation of firm funds is not deserving of the “professional death-sentence” of disbarment, Corey, 2012 UT 21, ¶ 40, we hold that suspension is appropriate. Intentional or knowing misappropriation of firm funds is a serious offense, and we conclude that Mr. Barrett’s intentional and knowing mental state, combined with the actual injury caused to his firm from losing the client funds that were due to it, along with the lack of compelling mitigating factors, merits a serious sanction. We therefore agree with the district court that the aggravating and mitigating factors do not justify deviating from suspension, and we uphold the court’s order of a 150-day suspension.

However, we part ways with the district court in two respects. First, we do not find that Mr. Barrett’s repayment of misappropriated funds constituted the mitigating circumstance that there has been a “timely good faith effort to make restitution.”…Mr. Barrett repaid SCM only after the firm accused him of misconduct, not as a result of self reporting. Therefore, we will not consider his restitution as a mitigating factor.

Second, the court found that there was no misconduct in billing the California lunch.

…there is no evidence that SCM’s policies prohibited Mr. Barrett from requesting reimbursement for a meal that he did not attend when he had spoken to the potential client on the phone. And in the absence of evidence that Mr. Barrett intentionally deceived the firm as to his presence at the lunch, we do not believe his conduct rises to the level that a sanction is necessary.

(Mike Frisch)