Simply Not True

A two-year suspension has been ordered by the New York Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department

While the respondent testified about certain personal stress in his life during the time of his misconduct, he failed to explain why such issues only adversely affected his client’s matter and not his career advancement. The question is not whether the respondent suffered personal challenges around the time that he was representing Rubio-DeNavarro, but whether such challenges had a causal relationship to the misconduct. The timeline, as he testified to, suggests that it did not. In November 2018, the respondent received two settlement checks made payable to Rubio-DeNavarro and one settlement check for the putative class. He failed to promptly distribute the settlement funds to the clients, but paid himself. Also in November 2018, he was hired by Alcott as a human resource compliance manager and was doing so well there that they promoted him to general counsel approximately six months later (in approximately May 2019). This was before he began regular treatment in November 2019 for his mental health issues. The respondent did not explain how his personal challenges prevented him from sending the settlement checks to Rubio-DeNavarro but did not prevent him from doing so well at Alcott that the company promoted him to general counsel after six months of employment. Even after he was thriving at Alcott, the respondent made no attempt to identify the putative class members and distribute the settlement funds until well after Rubio-DeNavarro filed a grievance complaint against him. For approximately two years, the respondent held onto the settlement funds belonging to 209 putative class members who had worked more than 10 hours a day in the restaurant business, from November 2009 through May 6, 2015, and were not properly compensated, while he paid himself immediately.

We find in significant aggravation that when the respondent eventually distributed the settlement funds to the putative class members, after he was already being investigated by the Grievance Committee and had successfully addressed his mental health issues, he further misrepresented in his letter to the individual 209 putative class members that “[a] settlement on behalf of the class was reached and approved by the court.” This was simply not true. Furthermore, while the respondent admitted that he collected illegal fees from litigants that he did not represent, the record does not reflect any remedial effort by the respondent to return the illegal fees he collected to those litigant.

(Mike Frisch)