A Cautionary Tale

On October 13, 2010, the ABA Journal featured a cautionary tale for all law students to take heed.  A lawyer from Kansas City, Carlos Romious, was disbarred for “for charging a soldier a fee of $3,500 an hour, shouting profanities at court clerks, brawling with court security officers and suggesting that a judge is pedophile,” according to the ABA Journal article, the National Law Journal and the Legal Profession Blog.  According to the National Law Journal, “Romious had originally agreed to represent the soldier for a flat $3,500 fee, but later claimed the amount was his hourly charge,” and in a different instance, according to the full-text of the Supreme Court the opinion (PDF), “the court says, Romious asked a judge whether he was a pedophile and said, ‘You’re going to sit up there with the audacity and the smugness of your holiness.’”  In addition to Romious’ “abusive and bizarre behavior,” as cited by the court, the court points to Romious’ interactions with courtroom personnel, including security officers and clerks.  Specifically, the court cited where “Romious brawled with security officers after he set off a magnetometer,  he called a court clerk a ‘f—ing b—-,’ said he wanted to ‘ ‘f—ing’ file his papers, and declared that he was smarter than anyone in the clerk’s office.”  As a result the court said Romious’ behavior had resulted in two criminal convictions, an active sentence in jail and a contempt citation. The court opinion outlines all of  Romious’ behavior, including outrageous statements against opposing counsel, demands upon the prosecution, attempts to file incomplete or otherwise improper documents, failures to appear for hearings and court proceedings, and numerous other strange interactions.

Are you curious about the professional rules of conduct for your state? If so, most states publish the rules of professional conduct on the web (either the state bar website or a website designated for court rules and procedure) for easy searching ability.  For example, based on the situation presented above, the hearing panel stated Romious violated “KRPC 1.1 (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 410) (competence);  1.5(a) (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 460) (fees); 3.4(c) (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 552) (fairness to opposing party and counsel); 3.5(d) (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 558) (engaging in undignified or discourteous conduct degrading to a tribunal); 4.4(a) (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 572) (respect for rights of third persons); 8.4(b) (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 602) (commission of a criminal act reflecting adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer); 8.4(c) (engaging in conduct involving misrepresentation); 8.4(d) (engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice); 8.4(g) (engaging in conduct adversely reflecting on lawyer’s fitness to practice law); and Kansas Supreme Court Rule 211(b) (2009 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 321) (failure to file answer in disciplinary proceeding). If you’re looking for the ABA model rules or other ethics materials, check out the ABA/BNA Lawyer’s Manual on Professional Conduct, which provides access to practice guides, indexes, highlights, ethics opinions, and ethics rules.  If you have a second, take a quick tour of the database!

What the ABA/BNA Lawyer’s Manual on Professional Conduct is:

Well known among the nation’s lawyers as the most authoritative source for news and guidance on virtually every aspect of attorney conduct and legal ethics, trust the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct to help you practice ethically.

What it helps you do:

Protect yourself and your clients by consulting this service as soon as a question arises, and avoid malpractice suits and disciplinary actions.

Each topical Practice Guide in the Manual includes an overview, detailed background information and analysis of the law, and descriptions of how courts and ethics committees have applied the law in particular fact situations.

Stay ahead with Current Reports on recent court decisions, ethics opinions, disciplinary actions, and other news, all fully indexed.

Refer to American Bar Association standards and ethics opinions in full text, materials on state ethics rules, and synopses of opinions by state and local bar associations.

Stay ahead with Current Reports on recent court decisions, ethics opinions, disciplinary actions, and other news

- Liz McCurry -

Court Determines Disney is Off the Hook

The Central District of California closed the book to the decade long battle between Disney and the family of Stephen Slesinger, a comic-strip cartoonist.  The cartoonist acquired the Winnie the Pooh merchandising and trademark rights from A.A. Milne in 1930, and has in recent years accused Disney of copyright and trademark infringement.  Now the unresolved question of who owns the rights to the Winnie the Pooh characters has been answered, Disney came up empty handed.

Looking back often provides perspective for the future.  And as such, the procedural history of this case is interesting on numerous ethical and procedural accounts.  According to the order issued on September 29^th, “it is significant … to record that for some 13 years, the parties litigated in Superior Court over SSI’s [Stephen Slesigner Inc.] assertion of its right to royalties from Disney arising out of the exploitation of merchandising and other rights in the Winnie the Pooh characters. In 2005, SSI’s Superior Court lawsuit was dismissed as a sanction.”  This 2005 sanction-based dismissal was issued because SSI hired a private investigator to break into Disney offices and allegedly steal thousands of documents.  The dismissal was later affirmed by the California Court of Appeals.

As a correction from my earlier post,  “Disney did not succeed in invalidating Slesinger’s ownership of the Pooh characters, and Judge Cooper awarded the defendant summary judgment in February 2007″ (Law360). After some investigation, I discovered that Disney was not a party to the 2007 litigation.  Disney was financially supporting the litigation by the granddaughters of the creator of Winnie the Pooh, because it was the intent of the ladies upon recovering the copyright from the Slesingers to assign it once and for all to the entertainment mogul.  According to Law 360, “In 2002, Clare Milne, the granddaughter of Pooh author A.A. Milne, and Harriet Jessie Minette Hunt, the granddaughter of illustrator E.H. Shepard, brought the copyright suit seeking to enforce a contract termination letter. The letter sent by Clare Milne dislodged the Slesinger estate from its license agreement with Disney so Milne could claim the lucrative rights.”

With litigation pending in state court, SSI filed several federal counterclaims  against Disney alleging that Disney’s exploitation of the Winnie the Pooh characters was an infringement upon SSI’s rightfully owned trademarks and copyrights.   Accordingly to CourthouseNews writer, Annie Youderian, “Slesinger’s widow [licensed] the family’s rights to Disney, which turned the ‘willy, nilly, silly old bear’ into the company’s most profitable character.” The Slesinger family  alleged that Disney owed them a million plus in damages based on licensing fees on proceeds from DVDs, video games and other items featuring Winnie the Pooh characters and story lines.

In May 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper dismissed SSI’s allegation for breach of contract, bad faith, fraud, and declaratory judgment, and yesterday issued an order granting Disney’s motion to dismiss the copyright and trademark infringement claim.  Hopefully, this won’t become the next never ending story.

-Liz McCurry-