Lawyer Misappropriated $2K in 'Protection of the Client's Interest,' So He Isn't Disbarred
For the first time since 1990, the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals has declined to disbar a lawyer for intentionally misappropriating client funds.
Instead, in an opinion (PDF) today, a three-judge panel of the court ruled that Willie Hewett should be given a six-month suspension, but stayed it in favor of probation due to extraordinary circumstances.
A 15-year practitioner, Hewett had no prior record of discipline. And in other respects went above and beyond the call of duty to a ward of the court for whom he served as conservator until the man’s death, when Hewett was the only person to attend his funeral, the opinion says.
But, when his ward was potentially on the verge of losing Medicaid eligibility, due to having $750 too much in a bank account into which Hewett deposited his $90 monthly Veterans Administration checks, the lawyer paid himself $2,006.25 in attorney’s fees even though his petition for the payment to D.C. Superior Court’s Probate Court had been refused as excessive.
In its opinion today, the appeals court says Hewett intentionally misappropriated client funds, but concludes that “the facts of this case—in particular that the motivation for the misappropriation was protection of the client’s interest—present the type of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ in which disbarment is not the appropriate sanction.”
Hat tip: Blog of Legal Times.
