Hello everyone and welcome to this Ethics Alert which will discuss the recent New Jersey Supreme Court order/opinion which imposed a one year reciprocal suspension on a lawyer as reciprocal discipline for misconduct in a New York litigation matter. The disciplinary opinion is In the Matter of Gregory N. Filosa, Case No. 14-146 (NJ SC 11/6/14) and is online here: https://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/drb/decisions/Filosa_14_108.pdf
According to the opinion and disciplinary report, the misconduct involved the lawyer’s handling of an employment discrimination matter against the client’s former employer. The lawyer was an associate at his law firm and was supervised by firm partners. The employer requested information about the client’s efforts to mitigate damages through, inter alia, new employment.
The firm retained an economist as an expert to assess damages. The economist prepared an analysis based on the assumption that the client would be unemployed through the end of 2010. Before service of the expert report, the client accepted a job with Kraft that paid her more than she made at the former employer. She advised the associate about her employment, who told his supervisor. The law firm then sent the inaccurate expert report to opposing counsel and demanded a $350,000.00 settlement. The client was later deposed and lied about accepting the job at Kraft. The lawyer was aware that the testimony was false but did not correct it either at the deposition or later.
During the pendency of the case, the former employer learned about the client’s new position at Kraft and moved for sanctions and the dismissal of the case. The supervising attorney and another partner from the law firm were present at the May 2011 oral argument on the motion; however, the lawyer was not present.
After the hearing, the trial judge imposed a $2,500.00 sanction against the client and a $15,000.00 sanction against the law firm due to the “false testimony by (the client) at her deposition” as well as the lawyer (and his supervisor’s) efforts “to conceal (the client’s) new employment and to leverage a false expert report in order to extract a favorable settlement.” The judge did not to dismiss the case against (the employer) at the time. The lawyer resigned from the law firm on May 31, 2011.
The New York disciplinary board found that the lawyer had engaged in misconduct by “misleading (the former employer) about (client)’s employment prospects through the inaccurate expert report; by failing to correct (the client)’s deposition testimony; by failing to produce documents that would have revealed (the client)’s two job offers; and by trying to settle the case quickly ‘before the defendants caught on to the truth’”. He received a one (1) year suspension in New York in 2013. The New Jersey Supreme Court then imposed a one (1) year suspension nunc pro tunc as reciprocal discipline.
Bottom line: This lawyer was found to have concealed a client’s new employment, leveraged a false expert report in order to extract a favorable settlement, allowed the client to lie during a deposition, and failed to correct the client’s false testimony. Some other states might have imposed a longer suspension or disbarred the lawyer.
Let’s be careful out there.
Disclaimer: this e-mail does not contain any legal advice and the comments herein should not be relied upon by anyone who reads it.
Joseph A. Corsmeier, Esquire
Law Office of Joseph A. Corsmeier, P.A.
2454 McMullen Booth Road, Suite 431
Clearwater, Florida 33759
Office (727) 799-1688
Fax (727) 799-1670
[email protected]
www.jac-law.com
