Did Someone Call Me Snorer?

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals imposed a reciprocal six-month suspension of an attorney

The following facts were stipulated by Mr. Hartke and the Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board. In January 2014, Mr. Hartke attended a Continuing Legal Education (“CLE”) seminar in Virginia. During the morning session, Mr. Hartke fell asleep and began snoring, causing the seminar’s coordinator to intervene and wake Mr. Hartke. During the afternoon session, Mr. Hartke began talking loudly at a video presentation and continued to do so after the seminar coordinator asked him to stop. In response to Mr. Hartke’s continued outbursts, another attendee led Mr. Hartke from the room. That attendee smelled alcohol on Mr. Hartke’s person. Another attendee saw a nearly empty liquor bottle among Mr. Hartke’s possessions and noticed that Mr. Hartke appeared to be intoxicated. Mr. Hartke admitted to one attendee that he had been drinking.

In a written response to the Virginia State Bar and orally to a Virginia State Bar investigator, Mr. Hartke denied bringing alcohol to the seminar and denied being intoxicated during the seminar. When speaking with the investigator, Mr. Hartke also denied falling asleep and snoring during the morning session, insisting that he had been taking notes. In a subsequent conversation with an Assistant Virginia Bar Counsel, however, Mr. Hartke admitted that those representations were not accurate and that he did not take the steps necessary to correct his misrepresentations…

Mr. Hartke contends that his Virginia suspension was based on “sleeping and snoring in a [CLE] class.” To the contrary, as he acknowledged in the Virginia stipulation, Mr. Hartke was not suspended for sleeping and snoring. Rather, he was suspended for failing to correct misrepresentations that he made to the Virginia State Bar in the course of the Virginia disciplinary proceedings. This court’s Rules of Professional Conduct also prohibit misrepresenting facts in the course of a disciplinary proceeding. D.C. R. Prof. Conduct 8.1 (“[A] lawyer . . . [,] in connection with a disciplinary matter, shall not . . . [f]ail to disclose a fact necessary to correct a misapprehension known by the lawyer . . . to have arisen in the matter . . . .”); see also D.C. R. Prof. Conduct 8.4 (c) (“It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to . . . [e]ngage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”)

The court imposed the suspension nunc pro tunc so that it is fully served.

The title is inspired by these lyrics and dedicated to my friend and erstwhile colleague Ross Dicker.  (Mike Frisch)