Abbey Road To Disbarment

The Minnesota Supreme Court disbarred an attorney for misconduct uncovered during the course of a bar investigation

The Director’s additional investigation related to allegations regarding O’Brien’s failure to account for funds in a trust for which he served as trustee. Specifically, O’Brien was appointed as the sole successor trustee of the revocable trust agreement of M.J. after M.J. died in 2013. The beneficiary of the trust was the Order of St. Benedict, St. John’s Abbey (the Abbey). In March 2014, O’Brien established a trust checking account at U.S. Bank; he was the only person authorized to conduct transactions on the account. On September 23, 2014, O’Brien deposited $190,090.13 into the account, representing the proceeds from the sale of M.J.’s residence. O’Brien withdrew $903 in cash when he made this initial deposit. Between September 2014 and March 2015, O’Brien issued and endorsed checks from the trust checking account to himself or his law firm. The total sum misappropriated from the bank account, including fees, was $191,368.78.

The trust also was the sole owner of a brokerage account that O’Brien, as the trustee, controlled from January 2014 to July 2015. During this period, O’Brien made 40 wire transfers from the brokerage account without providing an accounting of these transactions. The total amount transferred from the brokerage account, including fees, was $137,051.67.

Taken together with the funds misappropriated from the bank account, O’Brien misappropriated $328,420.45 from the trust.

Sanction

Here, O’Brien’s most serious violation was misappropriating over $300,000 from the M.J. trust. He committed this misconduct in his role as a trustee, thus violating the fiduciary duty he owed to the beneficiary of the trust. He also failed to adequately represent D.F., to respond to D.F.’s attempts to contact him, and to return D.F.’s files. Furthermore, O’Brien has not cooperated with the attorney discipline proceedings, except to file an answer to the supplemental petition (which was later stricken). Any one of these violations would be sufficiently serious to warrant severe discipline.

(Mike Frisch)