Justia Professional Malpractice & Ethics Opinion Summaries

Petitioner, convicted of a non-fatal shooting, was sentenced as a habitual offender to 29-1/2 to 60 years for assault with intent to commit murder, to run concurrently with a sentence of 40 to 60 months for a felon-in-possession conviction, and a consecutive term of two years for a felony firearm conviction. He claims that his Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because his attorney fell asleep while he was being cross-examined. Michigan state courts rejected appeals. The district court denied habeas relief. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. At most, the attorney was asleep for part of a single cross-examination; a petitioner must show that his attorney slept through a substantial portion of the trial for the "Cronic" presumption of prejudice to attach. Noting the overwhelming evidence, the court stated that petition did not show a reasonable probability that counsel could have prevented prejudicial events from occurring had he been awake, much less that it would have affected the outcome of the trial. Although the attorney was later arrested for cocaine use, there was no evidence that he was using cocaine during the trial.. View "Muniz v. Smith" on Justia Law

Plaintiff suffered a stroke and claimed that the VA hospital failed to properly diagnose and take appropriate measures. He and his wife sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. 1346(b), 2671-80, and also sued their attorney for malpractice. The district court ruled in favor of the government and the attorney. The Sixth Circuit dismissed an appeal as forfeited because plaintiff had supplied only a transcript of the testimony of the government's expert witness Fed. R. App. P. 10(b)(3) and had failed to supplement. The district court properly refused to sanction plaintiff's attorney for ex parte communication with treating physicians. The court also properly credited the government expert and held that the hospital's actions were not the proximate cause of the stroke. View "Morisch v. United States" on Justia Law

When prosecutor Charles Graves was not prepared to proceed to trial and had not produced a video to defense counsel, a circuit court judge held him in criminal contempt and ordered him to be incarcerated. Upon review of the trial court record, the Supreme Court found that the trial judge denied the prosecutor due process of law and that the record contained insufficient evidence of criminal contempt. The Court reversed the prosecutor's convictions and the order of the circuit court was vacated. View "Graves v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

After Appellant Donald Brandt produced a fraudulent document in a civil proceeding, a circuit court held Appellant in civil and criminal contempt.  In turn, the court dismissed Appellant's legal malpractice action with prejudice and ordered him to serve six months in jail and pay the defendants' attorneys' fees. In 1998, Appellant sued Elizabeth Gooding and her law firm Gooding & Gooding, P.A. for legal malpractice based on Gooding's representation of him in a real estate transaction.  During the course of discovery, Appellant presented to his attorney a document which appeared to have been sent the lender in the transaction to Appellant on September 18, 1995.  Appellant also provided the letter to his malpractice expert.  The letter was then introduced in the expert's deposition and used by him to opine that Gooding had committed malpractice. The document, if authentic, would have imputed knowledge to Gooding of a conflict of interest related to the representation of Appellant in the real estate transaction.  Gooding, however, claimed the document was fraudulent.  As a result, Gooding requested a hearing to determine whether the document was authentic.  Additionally, Gooding requested the court hold Appellant in contempt and award costs if such authenticity could not be established. Subsequently, based on the fraudulent document, the State indicted Appellant for forgery.  After a jury found Appellant guilty of the indicted offense, the trial judge sentenced Brandt to ten years' imprisonment, suspended upon the service of four years, followed by five years' probation and payment of restitution. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Appellant contended that the trial judge erred in failing to dismiss the forgery indictment and in failing to grant his motion for a directed verdict on the ground that Double Jeopardy barred the forgery prosecution.  Upon review, the Supreme Court found that the State presented sufficient evidence to support a forgery conviction.  Because the forged document did not involve a dollar amount and the State did not present evidence of a definitive dollar amount, the Court held that the trial judge erred in sentencing Appellant for felony forgery. The Court remanded the case back to the circuit court for resentencing. View "South Carolina v. Brandt" on Justia Law

Petitioners Albert Ugas and Daniel Fishburn filed a recall petition against Respondent Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist, charging him with misfeasance and/or malfeasance and breach of his oath of office. Petitioners alleged that Mr. Lindquist failed to investigate alleged corruption and falsification of records by a former county assessor-treasurer. Additionally, Petitioners contended that Mr. Lindquist obstructed justice by deterring law enforcement from investigating the assessor-treasurer. The lower court dismissed Petitioners' affidavit of prejudice and held that the recall petition was legally and factually insufficient. The court awarded Mr. Lindquist $50,000 in attorney fees for Petitioners' intentionally filing a frivolous recall petition in bad faith. Petitioners argued on appeal that their recall petition was legally and factually sufficient and that they should not have been ordered to pay attorney fees. Upon review of the petition and the applicable legal authority, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision. View "In re Recall of Lindquist" on Justia Law

This suit stemmed from the efforts of plaintiff and its owner and founder to obtain a patent for an invention related to personalized postage stamps and the suit involved state law claims of fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in connection with a patent application. Plaintiff appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants, holding that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether plaintiff's claims were time-barred such that defendants were entitled to judgment as a matter of law and that in the alternative, there was no genuine issue of material fact as to the causation elements of plaintiff's claims. The court held that this case raised issues of patent law, and those issues were substantial because of the special federal interest in developing a uniform body of patent law in the Federal Circuit as recognized in Scherbatskoy v. Halliburton Co. and expressed by Congress's grant of exclusive appellate jurisdiction over patent cases to that court. Therefore, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal and transferred the suit to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1631. View "USPPS, Ltd. v. Avery Dennison Corp., et al." on Justia Law

Defendants engaged in discovery misconduct that was sufficiently egregious to cause the district court to enter an order of default against them. Although defendants subsequently challenged the default order as erroneous, defendants did not challenge the order of default by way of a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55(c) or 60(b). At issue was whether Judge Real, a district court judge, had the power to impose default as a sanction for discovery misconduct and assuming such power, whether Judge Real abused his discretion by imposing default rather than lesser sanctions. The court held that defendants' failures to comply with orders of the court provided Judge Real with the power under Rule 37(b) to impose sanctions sua sponte, up to and including default and that Judge Wilson appropriately revisited previous orders of the court when he replaced Judge Real after Judge Real recused himself. The court also held that the district court possessed the power to impose the sanction of default and that the district court did not abuse its discretion by doing so. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed. View "Dreith, et al. v. Nu Image, Inc., et al." on Justia Law

This matter involved a supposed "asset protection trust" (Henry's trust) settled by and for the benefit of respondent where petitioner, BNY Mellon Trust of Delaware (BNY), held a demand note representing a several hundred thousand dollar loan BNY had made to respondent, secured by the assets of his mother's estate and trust. At issue was whether BNY was entitled to summary judgment on the issue of breach of fiduciary duty in its management of Henry's trust. The court held that respondents failed to articulate a theory, and have failed to allege any specific facts, which would indicate that BNY acted in bad faith. The court also held that because respondent had failed to allege facts indicating that BNY's decision to pledge trust assets, and to liquidate and hold trust assets in cash, were taken in bad faith, summary judgment on the remaining fiduciary claims was appropriate. View "The Irrevocable Asset Protection Trust of Henry C. Rohlf" on Justia Law

This case stemmed from the transportation excise tax that National Airlines (National) owed the government. Plaintiff appealed the district court's summary judgment determination that, pursuant to 26 U.S.C. 6672, he was personally liable for the excise taxes that National collected from its passengers but failed to pay over to the United States during his tenure as National's CEO. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court and held that the district court properly found that plaintiff was a "responsible person" and that his failure to pay taxes was willful as defined by this circuit's precedents. View "Conway v. United States" on Justia Law

The SEC brought a civil action against defendant alleging that, as an outside director of Engineered Support Systems, Inc. (ESSI), he violated numerous federal securities laws by participating in the grant of backdated, "in-the-money" stock options to ESSI officials including his father. At issue was the district court's grant of defendant's Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 50(a)(1) motion for judgment as a matter of law. The court agreed with the district court's conclusion that the SEC had failed to prove the requisite elements of scienter and negligence. The court also held that there was no clear abuse of discretion in excluding any reference to the Incentive Stock Option Agreement between defendant's father and ESSI. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.View "Sec. and Exch. Comm'n v. Shanahan, Jr." on Justia Law