Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Sunday, September 10, 2006 12:24:58 AM
I admit to slacking off on this series. Politics is much more fun. Part 1. Part 2.
(Part 1 suffers from a townhall black on blue programming bug that has since been fixed)
The premise is of this series is that it is very easy for an attorney to work with his client to stall a lawsuit indefinitely if both are willing to perjure themselves by jointly claiming that the attorney wasn't communicating with his client. This scam carries almost no risk to either the attorney or the litigant.
There are two ethics rules that might make this scam dangerous to execute if they were enforced. I dislike long posts, so we will examine them one at a time to see just how seriously the state supreme court takes its responsibility to protect the public:
Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 1.3 Diligence:
"A lawyer shall act with reasonable tidelike and promptness in representing a client. A lawyer shall not neglect a legal matter entrusted to that lawyer."
This rule actually enables the Low Risk Scam in several ways: 1) It is not clear that an opposing litigant even has standing to make a complaint under it, and if this were a scam the litigant coconspirator would never make a complaint. 2) The state supreme court never requires that an opposing litigant to be made whole by the attorney, and almost never requires an attorney to make his own client whole. 3) Except in very unusual circumstances, and a two year delay wouldn't qualify as unusual,
the standard penalty for violating this rule is either private censure or public censure.
One of the reasons I believe that the state supreme court should be relieved of its ability to make and enforce ethics rules is that it makes no attempt to protect the public. Its only interest is in protecting judges and lawyers. This is but one of many examples.