Maine Rules

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court sent a reinstatement petition back to the single justice who had denied the relief.

The court reconsidered its earlier order affirming the single justice’s order denying reinstatement.

The court did not reinstate but rather remanded for evidentiary reasons

The record reflects that Jonas has engaged in more than two decades of litigation with his ex-wife during which he was suspended from the bars of three states, jailed for contempt, declared a vexatious litigant, and admonished by a federal court for making frivolous arguments. Nonetheless, he seeks reinstatement to the Maine Bar asserting that, notwithstanding those judgments, he has the requisite character and fitness to practice law.

In this appeal, Jonas challenges the process at every stage of the proceedings, the evidentiary determinations of the single justice, and the justice’s ultimate findings and conclusions. We conclude that there was no error in process at any stage of the proceedings; that Jonas received more than sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard; and that his claims of a failure of due process are without merit. Nonetheless, because we have concluded on this appeal that the evidentiary standard applicable to Jonas’s final de novo hearing was the more expansive “reasonable person” standard, rather than the Rules of Evidence, we remand for the single justice to consider whether to admit the evidence offered by Jonas that she excluded pursuant to the Maine Rules of Evidence and to determine the effect of any newly admitted evidence on her decision.

The court discusses at length the disciplinary history and procedures applicable to reinstatement matters

 Under the rules applicable to these proceedings, when a suspended attorney petitioned for reinstatement to the bar, the process and the petitioner’s burden were much the same as for an initial application, although the applicable evidentiary standards were not explicitly addressed in the rules. Again, the petitioner was the moving party, not the Board of Overseers of the Bar. Because the procedural posture, allocation of burdens, and ultimate consequences of reinstatement proceedings mirrored bar admission proceedings, we conclude that the reasonable person standard of evidentiary admissibility applied to reinstatement proceedings before the Commission and the Board. See M. Bar R. 7.3(j)(5) (providing that a petitioner seeking reinstatement had the burden to show “the moral qualifications, competency, and learning in law required for admission to practice law in this State” (emphasis added)).

 While most of petitioner’s claims were rejected

Because the matter was tried with the understanding that the Rules of Evidence applied to the proceedings, the single justice may have excluded evidence that would otherwise have been admissible had the justice had the benefit of our opinion applying the reasonable person standard of evidence. We must therefore remand the matter for the single justice to make findings based on both the existing evidentiary record and any new evidence presented by either party on remand. On remand, the court must consider only (1) the evidence that was explicitly offered and excluded based on the application of the Rules of Evidence and that was not otherwise admitted, and (2) to the extent allowed by the single justice, any evidence of reinstatement or disciplinary actions, further litigation, or other evidence deemed relevant by the single justice that has occurred after the close of evidence in the original trial.

 Justice Alexander dissented

It should be apparent, without any doubt, that the minor items of character, reputation and credibility evidence Jonas claims were excluded by the single justice’s application of the Maine Rules of Evidence should not and cannot make any difference in the previously affirmed result. Such evidence from persons who, it would appear, are unlikely to be aware of the full scope of Jonas’s past practices is not going to make a difference given Jonas’s record of two decades of abusive litigation practices, disregard of his ethical obligations, and disrespect for court orders that formed the basis for the single justice’s decision that we affirmed…

No prejudicial error having been demonstrated, I would summarily deny the motion for reconsideration.

(Mike Frisch)