In re Tun

District of Columbia Court of Appeals·Decided December 22, 2022·No. 22-BG-54·Published

Opinion

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Atlantic and Maryland Reporters. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of the Court of any formal errors so that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS No. 22-BG-054

IN RE HARRY TUN, RESPONDENT.

A Suspended Member of the Bar of the District of Columbia (Bar Registration No. 416262)

On Report and Recommendation of the Board on Professional Responsibility (Bar Docket No. 2017-D215)

(Board Docket No. 19-BD-019)

(Argued October 26, 2022 Decided December 22, 2022)

Abraham C. Blitzer for respondent.

Myles V. Lynk, Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel, with whom Julia L.

Porter, Deputy Disciplinary Counsel, was on the brief, for the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.

Before EASTERLY and ALIKHAN, Associate Judges, and RUIZ, Senior Judge.

ALIKHAN, Associate Judge: Considering the record before it, including Disciplinary Counsel’s recommendations, the Ad Hoc Hearing Committee’s report, and the respondent’s counterarguments, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility concluded that Harry Tun had violated numerous Maryland Rules of Professional Conduct by committing serious acts of repeated dishonesty. Despite

the Hearing Committee’s recommendation that Mr. Tun be suspended for three years with a fitness requirement, the Board concluded that he should be disbarred. Because Mr. Tun concedes that he violated the charged rules, and because disbarment is within the acceptable range of outcomes for misconduct of this magnitude, we agree with the Board’s recommendation and disbar Mr. Tun from the practice of law in the District of Columbia. 1

I. Factual Background A. Mr. Tun’s D.C. Bar Membership and Disciplinary History Mr. Tun has been a member of the District of Columbia Bar since 1988. From 1993 to the present, he has received a total of five informal admonitions from the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel (formerly the Office of Bar Counsel) and two suspensions from this court for violating various professional rules.

Mr. Tun’s disciplinary history is long, but we review it to provide an accurate timeline of his misconduct. Mr. Tun received his first informal admonition in November 1993 for violating D.C. R. Prof. Conduct 1.4(a) (failing to communicate

1 This court is able to discipline Mr. Tun for his violations of the Maryland Rules of Professional Conduct because the conduct giving rise to this proceeding had “its predominant effect in another jurisdiction in which the lawyer is also licensed to practice.” D.C. R. Prof. Conduct 8.5(b)(2)(ii); see In re Johnson, 158 A.3d 913, 915 n.1 (D.C. 2017) (“A lawyer admitted to our bar may be disciplined here for conduct occurring in another jurisdiction, and in appropriate cases, as here, subject to discipline here based on the ethics rules of the other jurisdiction.”).

with a client) and 1.5(b) (failing to provide a client with a written fee arrangement). He received his second in February 1995 for violating then-Rule 1.15(b) (failing to properly transmit funds to a third party). His third came in February 2004, this time for violating Rules 1.15(a) (failing to maintain records of a client’s settlement agreement) and 1.16(d) (failing to provide a client’s file). He received his fourth in October 2011 for violating Rule 1.6(a) (improperly disclosing a client’s confidences). And his fifth and final informal admonition came in October 2013 for violating Rule 4.3(a)(1) (improperly advising an unrepresented person despite a potential conflict with his client’s interests).

An informal admonition is a form of discipline. See D.C. Bar R. XI, § 3(a)(5).

Each letter of admonition that Mr. Tun received specified the rules he had violated and explained that the admonition constituted discipline pursuant to D.C. Bar R. XI, § 3. And even though a recipient of an informal admonition can request a formal hearing to challenge the charges, D.C. Bar R. XI, § 8(b), Mr. Tun did not do so.

In addition to being informally admonished, Mr. Tun was suspended in both 2011 and 2018 for separate violations of the District of Columbia’s professional rules. In 2011, he received an 18-month suspension (with six months stayed in favor of a one-year term of probation) for filing inaccurate Criminal Justice Act vouchers with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia between 1999 and 2003. See In

re Tun (Tun I), 26 A.3d 313, 314 (D.C. 2011) (per curiam). His submissions double- billed for work he had done, resulting in $16,034 of overpaid funds. Id. Mr. Tun and Disciplinary Counsel eventually filed a petition for negotiated discipline, which this court accepted at the Hearing Committee’s recommendation. Id. at 314-15.

The proceedings for Tun I, however, spawned yet another disciplinary action.

In 2018, Mr. Tun was suspended for one year for lying on a motion to recuse. See In re Tun (Tun II), 195 A.3d 65, 68-72 (D.C. 2018). The motion, which Mr. Tun filed while the Tun I proceedings were ongoing, falsely stated that the Tun I investigation had concluded without any disciplinary action being instituted against him. Id. at 69-70. In an effort to avoid blame for that misconduct, Mr. Tun also gave intentionally false testimony to the Hearing Committee during the Tun II proceedings. Id. at 74. While the Hearing Committee and Board both recommended a one-year suspension, only the Board recommended an additional fitness requirement. Id. at 71-72. After reviewing comparable cases and determining that a showing of fitness was unnecessary, we suspended Mr. Tun for one year. Id. at 79. 2

One member of the panel would have imposed a fitness requirement. Tun II, 2

195 A.3d at 79 (Glickman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

B. The Present Violations Mr. Tun was admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in March 1993. He subsequently applied to renew his membership six times: in May 1997, March 1999, March 2002, March 2005, March 2011, and July 2017. Each application asked whether Mr. Tun had ever “been denied admission to practice, disbarred, suspended from practice, or disciplined by any court or bar authority.” On the first five renewal applications, he answered “no” even though he had received one or more informal admonitions before each application. On the sixth, which he submitted after his 2011 suspension, he answered “yes,” disclosing the suspension but none of the informal admonitions. The renewal application also asked whether Mr. Tun was the subject of any pending disciplinary proceedings. To his credit, he answered “yes” to this question on his fifth renewal application, which he submitted while Tun I was ongoing. But he answered “no” to this question on his sixth renewal application, even though he was in the middle of the proceedings that would ultimately result in his second suspension. In each application, Mr. Tun “declare[d]” or “certif[ied]” under penalty of perjury that his responses were true.

In August 2017, Mr. Tun wrote a letter to the district court admitting that his answer to the pending discipline question in his sixth renewal application was false. Mr. Tun claimed that he had believed that the question only referred to disciplinary

actions pending in Maryland, despite having reported the pending District of Columbia disciplinary proceeding in his fifth renewal application.

II. Procedural History After receiving Mr. Tun’s letter, a district court employee informed the D.C.

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