“Falsehoods Have A Tendency To Metastasize Like Cancer”

A cautionary tale from the Iowa Supreme Court

With trial looming and a discovery sanctions motion pending, a woefully underprepared lawyer told opposing counsel and the court that his client had accepted the opponent’s $15,000 settlement offer. But the client had forcefully rejected that offer, saying she’d rather get nothing. The lawyer then pressured the client into accepting the $15,000 settlement using false information.

This case is a cautionary tale to the unprepared lawyer to avoid attempts to whitewash one’s poor performance by pressuring a client to settle to end the case. Here, the settlement ended the lawsuit but triggered this attorney disciplinary matter.

A division of our grievance commission heard the evidence and concluded the lawyer committed multiple violations of the Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct and recommended a three-month suspension of the lawyer’s license. Upon our review, we find all the same violations of our ethics rules and impose the recommended three-month suspension.

The attorney was admitted in 2013 and was in solo practice. 

The representation was of a plaintiff in a lead paint claim

Beauvais gave a phoned-in performance as [client] Banks’s advocate in the litigation.

Settlement without authority

Notwithstanding Bank’s decision, on September 2, Beauvais told defendants’ counsel that Banks accepted the $15,000 settlement offer. But Beauvais didn’t tell Banks. Four days later, Banks appeared at the courthouse to attend the hearing scheduled on the pending motions. Only then she learned—from courthouse staff—that there would be no hearing because her case had settled.

Then

On November 29, Beauvais sent Banks both a letter and an email informing her that if she didn’t sign the agreement she would be “in contempt of the Court order.” But the court’s order made no mention or threat of holding Banks in contempt. When Banks sent Beauvais a text asking what would happen if she didn’t sign the agreement, Beauvais responded that she could have to pay over $3000 in attorney fees and could be assessed court costs. These repercussions, again, were nowhere in the court’s order.

The client then filed the bar complaint. 

The court

Beauvais misrepresented to opposing counsel, and later to the court, that his client had accepted the $15,000 settlement offer when she hadn’t. Falsehoods have a tendency to metastasize like cancers, as happened here: When the district court granted the motion to enforce the settlement, Beauvais emailed Banks with unsupported threats that if she didn’t sign the agreement the court would hold her in contempt, make her pay over $3000 in attorney fees, and assess court costs against her. The district court’s order said none of this.

Sanction

There are also several mitigating factors to consider. The foremost is Beauvais’s acute inexperience when he took on this case. A lawyer’s inexperience can be a mitigating factor. Iowa Supreme Ct. Att’y Disciplinary Bd. v. Turner, 918 N.W.2d 130, 155 (Iowa 2018). Beauvais now recognizes that he had no business taking on a complicated toxic tort case of this type considering his lack of training and support. He had no experience evaluating, engaging, and assisting the types of expert witnesses he was relying on to prove causation and damages, and he apparently had no mentors or other experienced hands available to help train or assist him on these things as the case proceeded.

Beauvais expressed remorse and admitted to many of his failures in this case. Remorse is a mitigating factor, as are admissions to violations.

There were other mitigating factors

His inexperience in the practice and lack of support had Beauvais in a hole seemingly from the outset. His severe neglect only deepened the hole. Having found himself in a hole as trial drew near, he would have been wise to abide the adage to “stop digging.” But he instead pursued a path to paper over his failures with misrepresentations that harmed his clients. We find the commission’s recommendation of a three-month suspension is appropriate.

(Mike Frisch)