Pattern Of Dishonesty Draws Disbarment

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has disbarred an attorney with a record of prior discipline that was part and parcel of the present violations

Mr. Tun was admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in March 1993. He subsequently applied to renew his membership six times: in May 1997, March 1999, March 2002, March 2005, March 2011, and July 2017. Each application asked whether Mr. Tun had ever “been denied admission to practice, disbarred, suspended from practice, or disciplined by any court or bar authority.” On the first five renewal applications, he answered “no” even though he had received one or more informal admonitions before each application. On the sixth, which he submitted after his 2011 suspension, he answered “yes,” disclosing the suspension but none of the informal admonitions. The renewal application also asked whether Mr. Tun was the subject of any pending disciplinary proceedings. To his credit, he answered “yes” to this question on his fifth renewal application, which he submitted while Tun I was ongoing. But he answered “no” to this question on his sixth renewal application, even though he was in the middle of the proceedings that would ultimately result in his second suspension. In each application, Mr. Tun “declare[d]” or “certif[ied]” under penalty of perjury that his responses were true.

In August 2017, Mr. Tun wrote a letter to the district court admitting that his answer to the pending discipline question in his sixth renewal application was false. Mr. Tun claimed that he had believed that the question only referred to disciplinary actions pending in Maryland, despite having reported the pending District of Columbia disciplinary proceeding in his fifth renewal application.

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In light of the Board’s thorough analysis of the sanctions factors—and the lack of any meaningful challenge to it from Mr. Tun—we forgo an in-depth discussion of the topic here. In brief, we agree with the Board that the sanctions factors weigh heavily in favor of a harsher sanction given the serious nature of the misconduct, which involved more than 20 years of repetitive, dishonest behavior.

We also note that this is Mr. Tun’s third visit to our court for violating our rules of professional conduct (and his eighth time being subject to discipline in our jurisdiction). Both of his prior suspensions involved dishonest conduct, and his 2018 suspension was for precisely the same type of dishonest behavior at issue here: making false statements to a court.

The court carefully and persuasively distinguished prior dishonesty cases and emphasized its deferential standard of review of the sanction recommended by its Board on Professional Responsibility. (Mike Frisch)