The Buck Includes Fitness
A 48-page per curiam opinion of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals suspends an attorney for 60 days with fitness, notwithstanding a “no fitness” recommendation of its Board on Professional Responsibility
In a report consolidating disciplinary cases heard by two Hearing Committees, the Board on Professional Responsibility (the “Board”) concluded that respondent, Gregory L. Lattimer, committed multiple violations of the District of Columbia Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4(a) (communication with client) in the course of representing two clients in the District of Columbia, as well as violations of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 (competence), 1.3(a) (diligence), and 8.4(c) (misconduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation), in the course of representing a third client in Virginia. The Board recommended Mr. Lattimer be suspended for sixty days, with the requirement that Mr. Lattimer pay restitution with interest to the family of one of his clients and provide proof of payment prior to reinstatement. We agree with the Board’s conclusions that Mr. Lattimer’s conduct violated the District of Columbia and Virginia Rules and adopt the Board’s recommendation as to sanction, except that we additionally impose a fitness requirement.
As to the Court’s sanction responsibilities
Ultimately, “the buck stops here.”
Why the board got the fitness issue wrong
Three broad concerns lead us to conclude that imposition of a fitness requirement is necessary in this case: (1) Mr. Lattimer’s adamant refusal to accept responsibility and his corresponding willingness to blame any deficiencies in his representation on his clients; (2) his decision to file a patently frivolous lawsuit against a former client; and (3) his repeated practice before multiple tribunals of presenting a revisionist narrative of his actions.
First, Mr. Lattimer’s failure to acknowledge wrongdoing and accept responsibility pervades his arguments to this court. He asserts he committed no rule violations and that the determinations by the Board to the contrary are without foundation. Specifically, Mr. Lattimer argues “[t]here was no evidence to support a finding that [he] improperly exercised his judgment in prosecuting the claim of Denise Wilkins”; “[t]here was no evidence to support a determination that [he] engaged in dishonesty with respect to an argument made to a tribunal” in the Wilkins case; the Board and the Hearing Committee’s determination that he failed to adequately investigate the Wilkins case “is not supported by any evidence of any kind“; the “contention” that he failed to engage an expert in the Wilkins case in a timely manner “has no basis in fact, law[,] or logic”; and that “[t]he Hearing Committee had no basis upon which to find that [he] failed to communicate” with either Ms. Cooper or Mr. Strange. (emphasis added).
Instead of accepting responsibility for his misconduct, Mr. Lattimer seeks to blame others, most frequently his clients. He blames Mr. Strange, who was indigent and incarcerated, for only calling collect instead of using other means of communication. See supra note 4. He asserts Ms. Cooper was a difficult client, while ignoring the root cause of the problem: his failure to adequately communicate with her. Most shocking, Mr. Lattimer now claims that the Wilkins case was flawed from its inception because (1) his client, Ms. Wilkins, “had caused [her son, Mr. Davis,] to be at Central State Hospital,” and (2) Mr. Davis was an unstable and violent individual.
We are extremely concerned that Mr. Lattimer would insinuate that Ms. Wilkins was in some part responsible for her son’s killing by another patient simply because she called the authorities when her son was in crisis, which eventually led to his hospitalization. With Mr. Davis in its custody, Central State Hospital was responsible for his care and protection; and, as Mr. Lattimer well knows, an official state report concluded that his death was the result of “substantiated” “staff neglect.” We are similarly dismayed by Mr. Lattimer’s graphic description of Mr. Davis’s behavior while in the throes of mental illness and his insinuation that Mr. Davis’s violent behavior precipitated his death. As a society, we commit individuals to psychiatric facilities when mental illness has rendered them a danger to themselves or others; and, for the duration of their commitment, it is the responsibility of the facility to keep them and others safe. Mr. Lattimer’s arguments about Ms. Wilkins and her son are denigrating as well as diversionary. We cannot say if Ms. Wilkins could have ultimately won her case. But we know why she lost: Mr. Lattimer failed to timely name as a defendant the individual who was the director of the hospital at the time of Mr. Davis’s death as required by his own theory of the case, and he failed to timely file his expert report. In short, the faults apparent in Mr. Lattimer’s representation are his alone, and his refusal to accept responsibility and his inappropriate blame-shifting are grounds to question his fitness.
He also had sued a client for defamation for statements made to the client security fund.
Such statements are immune
In addition to his failure to accept responsibility, his efforts to shift blame for his shortcomings to his clients, and his decision to bring a patently frivolous lawsuit against client, we add one more consideration: Mr. Lattimer’s persistent willingness to revise history and take whatever position best suits his needs at that particular time, as evidenced by his litigation of this disciplinary matter.
(Mike Frisch)