People v. Field

967 P.2d 1035, 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 5565, 1998 Colo. LEXIS 776, 1998 WL 784561
CourtSupreme Court of Colorado
DecidedNovember 2, 1998
DocketNo. 97SA352
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 967 P.2d 1035 (People v. Field) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Colorado primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Field, 967 P.2d 1035, 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 5565, 1998 Colo. LEXIS 776, 1998 WL 784561 (Colo. 1998).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

This lawyer discipline case began as a letter of admonition from the grievance committee to the respondent, Mark P. Field. Field demanded that the admonition be vacated and that a formal complaint be filed against him. See C.R.C.P. 241.7(5). Following the filing of a complaint, a hearing board recommended that Field be publicly censured and be ordered to work under the supervision of a practice monitor for one year. A hearing panel of the grievance committee approved the board’s findings and recommendations. We accept the board’s and panel’s recommendations and publicly censure the respondent and impose the monitoring conditions.

I.

Mark P. Field was admitted to practice law in Colorado in 1980. The hearing board made the following findings by clear and convincing evidence.

Richard Mera is the owner of an automobile repair shop. In December 1993, he sold a used car to a customer. The automobile needed extensive repairs soon after the purchase, but Mera claimed that he was not responsible for the repairs. The customer brought an action against Mera in small claims court and won. Mera hired Field to appeal the judgment and paid Field a flat fee of $600. Field filed a notice of appeal on August 12, 1994 in the District Court for the City and County of Denver and filed the appeal brief on August 27, 1994. Mera posted an appeal bond in the amount of $2,500. In June 1995, Mera called asking about the status of the case and Field told him that the court had not yet ruled.

On August 21, 1995, the district court affirmed the small claims court judgment. A copy of the decision was mailed to Field’s office on August 22. The hearing board found that the order was received by Field’s office, but that Field did not recall seeing it. Between August 1995 and February 1996, Mera telephoned Field on one or two occasions about the appeal and Field told him that he had heard nothing about the case. Field took no steps to determine whether the court had in fact ruled on the appeal.

Frustrated by the delay and not hearing anything from Field, Mera called the district court and learned that the court had ruled against him the previous August and that the appeal bond he had posted had been disbursed to the plaintiff. Mera called Field’s office and left a message for Field to call him back. While it was disputed whether Field called Mera back and left a message, it is not disputed that Field made no further attempts to contact Mera or to determine the status of the appeal. The hearing board found that Field did not personally learn about the district court order until March 1996, when Mera filed a request for investigation against him.

[1036]*1036Field explained to the hearing board that at the time he handled the Mera appeal, he was also handling 1,500 to 2,000 other open cases, mostly collection cases. Because of the volume of his practice, and the fact that at the time he was a sole practitioner, his nonlawyer staff screened his mail and he personally saw only a small percentage of the mail. Field also moved his office while the Mera case was pending, but mail sent to the old address was picked up on a regular basis by one of his employees. This employee was ultimately asked to resign, however, because of poor job performance.

Field admitted that the Mera appeal had not been entered into a computer tickler program as it should have been. The board concluded that Field’s conduct went beyond a single act of simple negligence. He was unaware that a final decision had been rendered in the appeal, causing Mera unnecessary anxiety over the case and making a further appeal essentially impossible, because of a number of negligent acts in combination. Field failed to enter the Mera case into his schedule in a way that would remind him to periodically check on its status; despite Mera’s telephone calls, he did not cheek with the court about the case after June 1995; he failed to contact Mera after receiving some of Mera’s calls; and he failed to delegate the review of his mail to ensure that communications from a court were calendared and brought to his attention, resulting in the loss of the district court’s order. Taking these acts and omissions together, the board found that Field had violated Colo. RPC 1.3 (neglecting a legal matter entrusted to the lawyer). On the other hand, because Field never actually saw a copy of the court’s order before the request for investigation was filed, the board determined that it had not been proven by clear and convincing evidence that Field violated Colo. RPC 1.4(b) (failing to explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation) because the occasion to explain the legal consequences of the order did not arise.

II.

The hearing panel approved the board’s findings and recommendation that Field be publicly censured and be required to undergo supervision of his practice for one year. Field has excepted to the recommended discipline as too severe, especially since the present proceedings arose from a letter of admonition that he had vacated. He points out that the hearing board determined that the level of misconduct was less serious than the inquiry panel assumed when it issued the letter of admonition. The hearing board found that it had not been proven that Field violated Colo. RPC 1.4(b).

The ABA Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions (1991 & Supp.1992) (ABA Standards) provides that, in the absence of aggravating or mitigating factors, a private censure “is generally appropriate when a lawyer is negligent and does not act with reasonable diligence in representing a client, and causes little or no actual potential injury to a client.” Id. at 4.44. On the other hand, a public censure “is generally appropriate when a lawyer is negligent and does not act with reasonable diligence in representing a client, and causes injury or potential injury to a client.” Id. at 4.43. Considering the hearing board’s findings and the actual harm in this case, a private censure would ordinarily be sufficient. However, Field’s disciplinary history is an aggravating factor. See id. at 9.22(a) (previous discipline is an aggravating factor for determining the proper disciplinary sanction).

He received a letter of admonition in 1987 for making an assertion in a civil complaint which he should have known was untrue. He received a second admonition in June 1996 for failing to advise the court of information he possessed concerning his client’s whereabouts. Field also received a private censure in October 1984 (which stayed a suspension for one year and one day) because between the time of his application to the Colorado bar and his admission, he entered into a criminal conspiracy to defraud an insurance company and received a deferred judgment. He failed to report this to the board of law examiners, and did not report the money [1037]*1037gained in the course of the conspiracy as taxable income.

In addition to these three private sanctions, we suspended Field in 1997 for six months and required him to go through reinstatement proceedings before he could practice law again. See People v. Field, 944 P.2d 1252, 1257 (Colo.1997). Field was hired to have his client’s criminal records sealed. See id. at 1253. However, he failed to take action for almost two years and did not respond to his client’s telephone calls. See id.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
967 P.2d 1035, 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 5565, 1998 Colo. LEXIS 776, 1998 WL 784561, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-field-colo-1998.