A decision of the Oregon Supreme Court
In this lawyer discipline case, the Oregon State Bar charged Steven L. Maurer, a retired judge who is now a practicing lawyer, with violating two disciplinary rules: (1) RPC 1.12(a), which prohibits a lawyer from representing a person in connection with a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially as a judge without the informed written consent of all parties; and (2) RPC 8.4(a)(4), which prohibits conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. A trial panel of the Disciplinary Board conducted a hearing and found that respondent had not committed the charged offenses, because the proceeding in which he represented his client as a lawyer was not the same matter in which he had participated as a judge. For the reasons that follow, we find that respondent’s conduct violated RPC 1.12(a), that it did not violate RPC 8.4(a)(4), and that the appropriate sanction for respondent’s misconduct is a 30-day suspension from the practice of law.
He had presided over an acrimonious marriage dissolution
the question presented is, more precisely, whether respondent represented husband “in connection with” the earlier dissolution proceeding when he represented husband in the contempt proceeding. We conclude that he did.
Respondent knew that he had previously presided
over the dissolution proceeding involving husband and wife;
that Judge Anderly’s February 2014 order, out of which the
contempt proceeding arose, was a modification of the dis
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solution judgment; that the contempt proceeding involved
the identical parties litigating in the same court and gen
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erally related to the same issue—the imposition of condi
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tions on husband’s parenting time; and that he had not
obtained wife’s written consent to his representation of hus
–
band. That is, respondent had a conscious awareness of the
nature and attendant circumstances of the facts constitut
–
ing his misconduct. However, because respondent believed
that the contempt proceeding was not the same “matter” as
the dissolution proceeding, he lacked the conscious objective
or purpose to accomplish a particular result. We therefore
conclude that respondent’s conduct in representing husband
in the contempt proceeding was “knowing.”
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