“As Is”

The Maryland Court of Appeals has issued an opinion in a case where the court had entered a disbarment order when the attorney failed to appear for oral argument.

The misconduct involved mishandling a criminal matter, misrepresentations and failure to meaningfully respond to the bar complaint.

Her effort before the court failed to impress

We are unable to make sense (logically, grammatically, or otherwise) of some of Respondent’s written exceptions, illustrated by her following statement: “The claims that Ms. Shuler brushed the respondents statement of the 5 years as being misleading.” Additionally, some of Respondent’s “arguments” do not even challenge the findings or conclusions of the court. For example, Respondent states that “the Court cannot find, by clear and convincing evidence that the Respondent was acting as an incompetent attorney when she failed to obtain a hearing on the Review Application,” because, “[b]y the time that Respondent was heard, this was already finally resolved.” This statement is actually an unattributed quotation from the hearing court’s conclusions of law, the relevance of which to Respondent’s exceptions arguments is unclear, because the court determined her incompetence for a variety of other reasons.

We shall not re-imagine Respondent’s exceptions, but rather, like the proverbial Summer rule of golf that directs that one play the ball where and as one finds it, we shall treat largely her exceptions “as is.”

Thus

Respondent’s history of violating our rules of professional conduct and lack of remorse or ameliorative action suggests that her continuance of the ability to practice law in Maryland represented a grave risk to the public and the legal profession. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we issued a per curiam order disbarring Respondent on 3 April 2017.

(Mike Frisch)