Default Is In Lack Of Notice
A Michigan attorney has consented to disbarment in the wake of a conviction for a single state felony forgery.
Detroit Free Press reported on the charges
Three Oakland County lawyers face criminal charges that could have them lose their law licenses and get sent to prison.
The three were charged last year with committing fraud that victimized hundreds of small-time debtors — people who owed money to banks, credit unions, landlords, and other creditors. The lawyers allegedly failed to notify these people that they were being sued for their debts, allowing the lawyers to get instant judgments when the people were no-shows in court.
This month, the three lawyers face a new hazard. It’s a class-action lawsuit to flip the script. Several of the lawyers’ debtor victims have turned into plaintiffs. They want a court-ordered settlement, so they can turn the tables and collect from the lawyers. The new lawsuit seeks to unite hundreds of Michiganders who owed consumer debt into a class that can jointly sue these lawyers in a single case.
The multiple legal threats ensnarling the three lawyers highlight not only their possible wrongdoing but also a key constitutional right of all Americans: the basic right just to know you’ve been sued.
The new lawsuit seeking a class-action payout, filed on April 8, comes just more than a year after criminal charges were leveled against the three lawyers, triggering a scenario that was upsetting to some in Michigan’s legal profession. Those bothered included Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, who said last year when he announced the charges: “It pains me to charge fellow members of my profession, but nobody is above the law.
Reached this week, Leyton told the Free Press in a statement: “We know from our police investigations that there are over 80 victims in Genesee County alone, and we believe there are potentially hundreds of other victims spread across at least three other counties and possibly more in Michigan.” Each of the three lawyers is innocent until proven guilty. The defense attorneys representing them said they’re outraged not only by the charges but also by Leyton’s statements.
“I’ve practiced law for 26 years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation of alleged wrongdoing so overstated,” said Kimberly Stout, a criminal defense attorney in Birmingham. Stout added: “Even if they’re found not guilty, certainly the prosecutor’s statements will have a very negative effect on their professional lives from now on.”
The class-action lawsuit comes a few weeks after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, on March 23, signed a pair of bills into law that stiffens the penalty for the non-lawyers, called process servers, if one of them commits similar legal shenanigans as alleged against the three lawyers: Marc Fishman, 71, of Bloomfield Township; his son, Ryan Fishman, 33, of Orchard Lake; and Alexandra Ichim, 34, of Waterford. The three lawyers’ alleged misbehavior was to have forged numerous legal documents, called proofs of service. Each proof of service tells the court, officially and for the record, that someone being sued has been properly notified according to Michigan law.
(Mike Frisch)
States differ slightly in their requirements, but the right to be notified of a criminal charge is enshrined in the U.S. and state constitutions. For a civil case, such as being sued for a debt, the same right is built into state laws. By sidestepping that right in numerous locales, the Fishmans and Ichim allegedly sped up their fees for handling a nonstop stream of debt-collection cases, assembly-line style. Leyton announced charges against the trio in April 2021 after investigators received tips that the three lawyers allegedly found a way to do without the time-consuming effort of hiring process servers — the self-employed couriers who hand-deliver the court’s notification, called a summons, to anyone being sued. Because the COVID-19 pandemic slowed court business everywhere to a crawl, the criminal cases against the trio of lawyers finally are approaching pretrial hearings, scheduled for Monday.