Quite Likely To Offend

A reprimand has been imposed by the New Jersey Supreme Court for words spoken in an attorney’s encounter with court personnel. 

At issue was conduct described in the report of the Disciplinary Review Board

In this case, we are confronted with comments that an attorney made to court staff and must determine whether those remarks violated the Rules of Professional Conduct, and, if so, the appropriate quantum of discipline. Although respondent does not deny having uttered the words, he disputes that race played a role in his statements. In contrast, court staff interpreted respondent’s comments as having racial connotations.

The encounter took place when the respondent attempted to file eviction paperwork in the Atlantic County Civil Courts Building. The witness testimony is recounted at length. 

Following a disagreement between respondent and court staff, and after Richard Hunter, a seventy-seven year-old Jury Management Supervisor, had improperly placed his hands on respondent, respondent admittedly uttered the words, “I am tired of this racist ghetto B.S.” Sharon Woodard and Shanise Griffith, African American court employees with whom respondent had been arguing, heard respondent’s comment and filed the ethics grievances underlying this matter. Hunter is also African American.

The board noted

During the ethics hearing, respondent presented multiple character witnesses who all testified that he was not racist…

Given the facts presented during respondent’s case-in-chief, and in his many submissions in respect of these ethics proceedings, which strongly support respondent’s defense that he neither holds nor condones racist beliefs, we consider respondent’s statement in the framework that he is demonstrably not racist; that he felt that he was the victim of discriminatory treatment by Woodard and Griffith; that he had been improperly touched by Hunter; that he was offended and angered by the cumulative conduct of the court employees and the comment of a third-party bystander at the time that he made the statement; and that he did not intend to cause harm when he uttered the statement within earshot of Woodard and Griffith.

The board nonetheless found a Rule 8.4(g) violation

Here, respondent made his comments, in a professional capacity, in the aftermath of an adversarial encounter with three African American court employees, in a public space within a courthouse. Respondent’s exclamation regarding “racist ghetto B.S.” was, by its very nature, demeaning and quite likely to offend. Respondent injected race and socioeconomic status into an altercation that, prior to his comment, featured no evidence of bigotry. He argues that we should accept his perception of the discrimination being
perpetrated against him, but to dismiss Woodard’s and Griffith’s perception of the import of his “ghetto” comment.

We conclude that respondent’s comment projected intolerable and “offensive and invidious discriminatory distinctions,” likely to be perceived as ascribing the qualities of “ghetto” to the African American employees with whom he had just had negative interactions. Despite respondent’s credible defense that he is not racist and did not intend to cause harm with his words, the words he chose to voice violated both RPC 3.2 and RPC 8.4(g).

(Mike Frisch)