Legal Ethics
An Overwhelmed Lawyer Leads to Md. Suspension for Lemon-Law Founders
Posted Sep 3, 2008, 05:24 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The founders of Pennsylvania-based Kimmel & Silverman, the “1-800-Lemon-Law” firm, have been suspended from legal privileges in Maryland for failing to supervise a lawyer there unable to keep up with an overwhelming caseload.
Maryland’s highest court suspended Craig Kimmel and Robert Silverman in an opinion (PDF) released yesterday, the Maryland Daily Record reports. The lawyers, who are not licensed in Maryland, can reapply for privileges in the state, which include the supervision of lawyers there, within 90 days.
Nearly four dozen of the firm’s cases were dismissed in 2005 after its only Maryland lawyer was unable to keep up with discovery requests. The result, Judge Glenn Harrell Jr. wrote for the majority, was “matters ultimately [going] to Hades in a handbasket.”
“In this business model and practice setting, a relatively inexperienced attorney was stationed alone in an office physically remote from the critical mass of the firm and directed to begin filing numerous cases as rapidly as possible,” he wrote.
In the “post-Apocalyptic” period, Harrell wrote, the firm did a good job of resolving the problems by compensating the clients and hiring lawyers and staff to handle the remaining cases.
Two dissenting judges said the punishment is not harsh enough. The state bar counsel’s office had argued the lawyers had unrealistic expectations for the firm’s Maryland lawyer, Robyn Glassman-Katz, requiring her to file 10 lawsuits a week at first and later 15 a week.
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