Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Saturday, September 16, 2006 12:38:09 AM
This is the second in a multi-part series (
introduction) that is intended to support the view that the Colorado Supreme Court has intentionally designed the legal ethics system to appear to protect the public when it does not. I'd be willing to use the word "inadvertently" if I hadn't found so many examples of a broken system. Here goes:
One of the most potent weapons that an unethical attorney or judge has to prevent victims from making a complaints is the threat of a lawsuit. I am peripherally aware of a situation where a citizen was vocally unhappy with an attorney's performance. The attorney's reaction was apparently to
threaten in writing to put the citizen in a position where he would be living in a cardboard box!
While it is certain that an ethical attorney could put someone in a cardboard box, I can sadly report that even the most unethical attorney in the world can do the same. All he has to do is file a lawsuit and use it to financially bleed the citizen to death. He doesn't have to win and doesn't expect to win, he just has to keep the process going. That is power and it discourages complaints.
Judicial ethics canons and court rules appear to REQUIRE that judges report unethical conduct by both judges and attorneys. It DOESN'T happen. I've made post after post and will make many more describing what the judge in my lawsuit knew about apparent unethical conduct and when he knew it, and yet he has taken no action. So, WHY would that be?
It turns out that the state supreme court has made a conscious decision that judges who follow their ethics canons and court rules WILL be subject to cardboard box lawsuits. On the other hand, if a judge chooses to ignore court and ethics rules and NOT report the attorney, he might get an ethics complaint lodged against him. As it happens, the state supreme court can dismiss the complaint, order the citizen making the complaint not to reveal that fact, and fully conceal its action from the public. Don't believe it? It's in the Constitution.
Why be so distrustful of the state supreme court? All one has to do is compare the Colorado judicial ethics canons with the American Bar Association model canons. The Colorado canon's are loosely based on the ABA canons, and where there is a difference, it has to be because the state supreme court made a conscious decision to implement, or not to implement the ABA model.
Here is the
Colorado Canon 3(B)3: A judge should take or initiate appropriate disciplinary measures against a judge or lawyer for unprofessional conduct of which the judge may become aware.
The
ABA model contains a similar requirement, though more detailed. It also contains one additional paragraph that appears to be missing from the Colorado Code:
3(D)3) Acts of a judge, in the discharge of disciplinary responsibilities, required or permitted by Sections 3D(1) and 3D(2) are part of a judge’s judicial duties and shall be absolutely privileged, and no civil action predicated thereon may be instituted against the judge.
So other states prohibit cardboard box litigation against judges, but Colorado does not appear to do so. That is why this series is named "Designed to Fail."
Part 2.