Disbarred lawyer wins appeal, has client-fraud conviction reversed after serving his prison time
A New York appeals court has reversed a disbarred bankruptcy lawyer’s 2011 conviction for defrauding 114 clients, finding that a trial judge erred in striking testimony by Christopher Chadick’s office manager after the witness took the Fifth.
Meanwhile, Chadick already served the minimum time required under his 4- to 12-year prison term and has been paroled, Syracuse.com reports.
The sentence, which was comprised of three consecutive terms of 15 months to four years, was the maximum the trial judge could give him, Syracuse.com reported at the time it was imposed.
Chadick’s former office manager, Hugh Fox, took a plea deal and was called by the prosecution as a witness at Chadick’s trial. Then he testified that others were to blame for the fact that clients who paid for bankruptcy work didn’t get it, an earlier Syracuse.com article recounts. Fox pointed the finger at paralegals and said a bankruptcy trustee and judge had an apparent vendetta against his boss.
Given a perjury warning by the trial judge, Fox returned after a break and asserted his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination. At that point, the trial judge struck all of his prior testimony and told the jury to disregard it.
However, the judge should have considered other options before striking all of the testimony by Fox, the appeals court ruled. “The court erred by failing to ‘weigh the options’ in a ‘threshold inquiry’ to determine whether ‘less drastic alternatives’ were available, other than striking the entire testimony of the co-defendant,” the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, explained in its Nov. 14 slip opinion (PDF).
Prosecutor Beth Van Doren says the government will retry the case against Chadick.
It isn’t clear from news coverage whether Chadick ever paid $94,500 in required restitution, to reimburse his 114 former clients for the legal fees they gave him.
He was disbarred (PDF) in 2011 following his conviction.
Related coverage:
Syracuse.com: “Bankruptcy lawyer rejects plea deal to admit defrauding clients”
