New Jersey Rejects Compulsive Gambling Mitigation

The New Jersey Supreme Court has disbarred an attorney for knowing misappropriation, rejected his gambling addiction as mitigation

He sought to mitigate with a gambling addiction as described by the Disciplinary Review Board

Respondent, who was born in October 1961, that his introduction to gambling occurred at age six, when his father took him to the race track. At age nine or ten, respondent’s father introduced him to football pools. Respondent invariably lost each week, resulting in “an awful feeling,” which he now recognizes was depression. At age eleven, respondent attended overnight camp where he and other campers played poker after “lights out.”

In middle school, respondent was stripped of an unidentified award when the school administration learned that he had been distributing football pools. In high school, he and his father ~attended horse races all along the east coast. Respondent even gambled in Puerto Rico casinos, despite being underage, because his grandfather was able to gain him entry.

He wrote a senior paper on compulsive gambling, became the “dormitory  bookie” in college but did well and gained entry to the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

 Respondent spent the next twenty-two years free of gambling and living a healthy lifestyle. He attended GA meetings regularly, had a sponsor and sponsored other GA members, held offices, and worked on his defects.

He went to a “large national law firm” as an associate.

At some point, respondent left that firm and went to another. He turned to payday loans to fund some casino gambling. In the fall of 2010, he lost all of it, felt hopeless, and “overdosed massively.” A few days later, his parents found him, unconscious, in a dilapidated house. Respondent spent the night in an emergency room, followed by a week in a mental health facility.  Because he had been missing from the law firm for ten days, he was fired.

No mitigation

Respondent admitted that he knowingly misappropriated the $32,500 in escrow funds. In his words, “it didn’t matter” that he knew it was wrong: “I was compulsively gambling and it was there.” Thus, nothing in respondent’s testimony or Dr. Dattilio’s report established that, on those occasions when respondent used the escrow monies to gamble, he was driven by a compulsion to misappropriate trust funds. Rather, he was driven by a compulsion to gamble. The trust account funds were merely the means by which to do so…

Hollendonner requires the disbarment of attorneys who knowingly misappropriate or borrow escrow funds, either for their own benefit or for the benefit of another, for a good purpose or for a bad purpose, with or without the intent to defraud, and with or without the intent to make restitution. In re Hollendonner, 102 N.J. 21; In re Noonan, 102 N.J. 157 (1986). Thus, respondent must be disbarred.

(Mike Frisch)