DENVER — Attorney Ronald Lawrence Roberts of Monument was ordered disbarred last week, with the sanction to take effect Sept. 26.
Roberts, whose firm address is in Monument, was found to have converted $4,000 in client funds. His clients, the Siecks, gave him a check to pay arbitration costs to the American Arbitration Association, but Roberts cashed the check and kept the money. Roberts never scheduled arbitration for his clients, didn’t return the money, and didn’t respond to his clients’ phone calls and e-mails. Roberts also didn’t respond to the regulatory complaint filed against him.
Presiding Disciplinary Judge William Lucero wrote:
“Respondent entirely abdicated his professional responsibilities in his representation of the Siecks. Respondent’s failure to respond to the Siecks after their tireless efforts to contact him, his continuing failure to return funds that are not rightfully his, and his non-participation in the disciplinary process are disquieting. Such misconduct reflects very poorly on the legal profession. In light of Respondent’s misconduct and the need to protect the public from future such misconduct, the Court concludes Respondent should be disbarred.”
DENVER — A hearing board on Tuesday dismissed a complaint brought the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel against 18th Judicial District Magistrate Patrick D. Butler. The order to dismiss was a rare occurrence; attorney regulation cases that reach a hearing usually result in a sanction of some kind.
Regulation counsel accused Butler of violating the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct by answering “no” to a question on a 20th Judicial District judgeship application in 2009 that asked if he had ever been professionally disciplined, when in fact he had received a private admonition for an undisclosed incident in 2004. When the discrepancy between his application and disciplinary record was pointed out, Butler said he did not recall getting the admonition and thought he had avoided sanction by taking an ethics class. Regulation counsel said Butler was reckless not to double-check whether he had been sanctioned.
The case went to hearing on June 22 before a three-person hearing board, headed by Presiding Disciplinary Judge William Lucero and also including attorneys Maureen Cain and David Herrera. Butler was represented by Craig Truman; the attorney for the regulation office was Charles Mortimer.
On Tuesday, Lucero’s office issued the order to dismiss, which reads in part:
“The Hearing Board concludes that Respondent’s inaccurate response to the query, while unseemly and inept, was not the product of an intentional effort to mislead the Judicial Nominating Commission. Nor does the evidence clearly or convincingly evince a reckless disregard for the truth such that we can find it deceitful or dishonest. Accordingly, the Hearing Board dismisses the People’s complaint.”
Butler, who has been an 18th Judicial District magistrate since April 2009, spent the previous two decades with the law firm Lamm & Butler. The 20th Judicial District judgeship that he applied for eventually went to Thomas Mulvahill.
DENVER — A lawyer with Colorado’s attorney regulation office could become Arizona’s first presiding disciplinary judge.
Charles “Chip” Mortimer, assistant regulation counsel in the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation, is one of three finalists to assume the newly created office of presiding disciplinary in Arizona, the Associated Press reports. The other candidates are Arizonans: Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Edward O. Burke and Pinal County Superior Court Judge William J. O’Neil. The full Arizona Supreme Court will decide who gets the job, which will have a salary of up to $145,000.
Beginning next year, Arizona is instituting a new attorney regulation system based on the one used in Colorado. John Gleason, head of Colorado’s attorney regulation office, has has spent a lot of time in Arizona this year after being hired as a neutral investigator in a controversial case involving former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
DENVER — Veteran criminal defense attorney Gary Lozow of Isaacson Rosenbaum has stipulated to a public censure issued by the disciplinary office of the Colorado Supreme Court for acting as an intermediary in law firm Milberg Weiss’ plaintiff kickback scheme. The order for public censure, signed by Presiding Disciplinary Judge William Lucero, was issued on Friday and takes effect immediately. The ability of Lozow, one of the state’s most respected defense attorneys, to practice law has not been affected.
The public censure relates to Lozow’s actions during two separate periods, one in the early 1990s and one in the early/mid 2000s, in which he acted as an intermediary for his old friend Howard Vogel, who was a plaintiff in a number of lawsuits filed by New York firm Milberg Weiss. The firm gave illegal kickbacks to Vogel and other plaintiffs who helped file class-action securities lawsuit. To disguise the kickbacks, Milberg Weiss gave money (a total of just under $2.5 million) to Lozow, who transferred it to Vogel. When Milberg Weiss was indicted in 2006 for its paid plaintiff schemes, Lozow was identified as “Vogel Intermediary A” but not charged with a crime.
“By recklessly failing to prevent Mr. Vogel and Milberg Weiss’ dishonest use of his trust accounts and by carelessly executing and receiving correspondence from Milberg Weiss that mischaracterized the nature of the payments in order to conceal Vogel and Milberg Weiss’ scheme, the respondent violated his duty to the legal profession to maintain its integrity,” the stipulation said.
Lozow was found to have violated C.R.C.P. 251.5 and Colo. R.P.C. 8.4(c). Without mitigating factors, the presumed sanction for these offenses would have been suspension, according to the stipulation.
In Lozow’s case, his long experience in the law and aiding of Vogel on two occasions were considered aggravating factors. But his cooperation with investigators, remorse and outstanding reputation mitigated against the maximum penalty. The stipulation also noted that Lozow “was not involved in the illegal scheme. Rather, he was attempting to assist an old friend who exploited this friendship.”
While Lozow signed the stipulation on June 14, the order for public censure did not take effect until Aug. 27. The reason for the delay was not addressed in the stipulation or order.
Lozow was represented by Jeffrey Pagliuca of Haddon Morgan & Foreman. The attorney for the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel was Margaret Funk.
Lozow released a statement on Friday accepting full responsibility for his actions and expressing the hope that his public discipline can serve as a lesson to other lawyers. (The full statement is found below.)
“A… lesson of which I understand fully is that legal decision making cannot be a function of friendship,” Lozow said. “I regret avoiding asking the hard questions that needed to be put to an old friend, questions that I’d probably ask of almost any other client. In addition, I accepted multiple explanations for my friend’s conduct too readily. In this regard, friendship and trust affected my judgment. After four decades of criminal defense work, including complex, white collar crime cases, I should have been more attentive to warning signs and less open to rationalizations that, in fact, were ‘red flags.’”
DENVER — Attorney Robert Thomas Edwards was ordered disbarred on Wednesday. The sanction will take effect Sept. 18 unless a stay is granted.
Edwards, attorney registration No. 36214, has been licensed in Colorado since 2005. His firm is listed as Robert Edwards PC at 1267 Trenton St., Denver.
Edwards was found to have knowingly converted $3,000 in client funds without performing any meaningful legal work. He failed to return the client’s money or files. Edwards was also found to have lied about the reason he did not perform the legal work, falsely claiming to have been called up for active duty in the military.
The disbarment was handed down by Colorado Presiding Disciplinary Judge William Lucero, who acknowledged that the sanction might seem unduly harsh, but said he was bound by state Supreme Court precedent that establishes a bright-line test calling for disbarment for knowing conversion of client funds. In his opinion, Lucero wrote:
“Here, the facts established by default do not demonstrate that Respondent abandoned his client. Further, his misconduct was limited to actions affecting just one client, and that misconduct was not characterized by a pattern of repeated wrongdoing. For these reasons, the court is concerned that disbarment is a disproportionately severe sanction in comparison to similar cases of attorney misconduct. Yet given the determination that Respondent knowingly converted client funds and in light of the minimal mitigating factors applicable here, the court finds that it lacks discretion to impose a lesser penalty.”
Colorado Attorney Regulation Counsel John Gleason, who in March was appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court to investigate the conduct of former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Deputy County Attorney Lisa Aubuchon, told The Arizona Republic he has been followed by private investigators while on the case.
Gleason also said he received a letter from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in which he told Gleason he was “concerned about the nature of our investigation.”
The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office recently began an abuse-of-power investigation into Arpaio and others, The Republic reports.
An attorney with the firm representing Aubuchon confirmed private investigators were hired to follow Gleason to figure out who he was talking to, where he was staying and the nature of Gleason’s investigation.
DENVER — Anthony Martinez, an attorney from Salida, was disbarred a week ago Thursday for forging his parents’ signatures on loan documents.
“I believe (the court) decision was appropriate,” Martinez told The Mountain Mail, a Salida newspaper. “The state can’t set the precedent that it’s okay to sign people’s names and not expect consequences.”
Martinez will be eligible to reapply for his law license in eight years, but said he is done with the law and will instead focus on new career.
“In a sense, I’m grateful,” he told The Mountain Mail. “I have a better alternative pursuing a travel business called World Ventures.”
DENVER — Loveland patent attorney Chad Soliz was on Thursday ordered disbarred by the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge, which found he had spent two clients’ money while failing to diligently and promptly file their patent applications. Soliz had his law license suspended in 2008 for similar conduct, but failed to notify a client of this fact.
The full complaint against him can be found here; the disbarment order is below.
Soliz, a 1998 graduate of the University of Colorado Law School, has been practicing in the state for more than a decade. His disbarment takes effect Aug. 1. According to the order released by Presiding Disciplinary Judge William Lucero:
“Respondent’s [Soliz’] conduct in the Keffer and Thieman matters is disquieting: in each case, Respondent took a retainer, consumed those funds, but failed to diligently work on the matter, resulting in significant monetary injury to both men and the loss to Keffer of a potentially lucrative business opportunity. And while the Court was impressed by the courage and humility it must have taken for Respondent to appear at his sanctions hearing after entry of the order of default, it cannot ignore Respondent’s prior disciplinary action and the pattern of misconduct here. The aggravating factors are too serious to justify deviation from the presumed sanction, and therefore the Court concludes Respondent should be disbarred from the practice of law.”
DENVER — The Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel has filed a complaint against attorney Jeffrey Detlefs, who in January pleaded guilty to multiple charges after driving drunk and hitting and seriously injuring a bicyclist, Jefferson County public defender Rex Hegyi. Hegyi has since made progress recovering from his injuries.
Detlefs, who was sentenced to six years for vehicular assault and three years for leaving the scene of an accident, is charged by regulation counsel under a provision stating “it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects.”
Detlefs was an attorney with Denver firm Kerr Brosseau Bartlett O’Brien when on Aug. 16 he struck Hegyi on an Interstate 70 on-ramp in Evergreen.
According to the attorney regulation complaint, Detlefs had consumed multiple gin and tonics when he set out in his 2004 Lexus SUV. He was attempting to drive his three children, 11-year-old twins and an 8-year-old, to buy school supplies.
Detlefs hit a tree and trashcans in the driveway when attempting to pull out of his garage. Detlefs was going about 65 miles per hours when he struck Hegyi from behind. His children pleaded with him to return to the scene, which he did briefly, only to drive away again. He drove home, with police trailing him as he neared home.
Police administered a blood-alcohol test after Detlefs failed a field sobriety test. His blood-alcohol level was .302.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge posts the outcome of disciplinary cases on its website, but usually about a month after they have been decided.
Most of the cases below, obtained by Law Week, have not yet been posted by that office.
Patrick Dennis Beasley: Complaint, 1-4-10
Daniel Sean Duggan: Complaint, 2-26-10
Carlos Leal: Conditional Admission, 4-16-10
Synthia Kaye Morris: Complaint, 4-2-10
Henry N. Mulvihill: Order for Disbarment, 4-16-10
Steven Jay Rozan: Conditional Admission, 4-19-10
Dennis James Sladek: Conditional Admission, 4-21-10
