On the front page of today’s Portland Press Herald, Verrill Dana gets the kind of publicity no law firm wants.
For those who may not recall, in 2007 John D. Duncan, a former partner at Verrill Dana, was disbarred and set to prison for stealing about $300,000 from clients and from Verrill Dana itself.
The Press Herald now reports that the Board of Bar Overseers is seeking sanctions against six lawyers from Verrill Dana for their alleged misconduct surrounding the Duncan matter.
J. Scott Davis of the Board of Overseers has filed a complaint against the six Verrill Dana lawyers alleging that they broke various ethical rules. One of those lawyers, reports the newspaper, may even be facing criminal charges.
The main allegation seems to be that when the lawyers at Verrill Dana were told by Duncan’s secretary that she had concerns about suspicious checks written by him, they questioned Duncan and simply accepted his false explanation. They then apparently told Duncan’s secretary to leave the issue alone.
She didn’t.
Instead, she consulted with her private attorney (Dan Lilley), and Davis claims that it was only when Lilley contacted Verrill Dana that a real investigation into Duncan’s illegal conduct was begun.
The lawyers for Verrill Dana deny that they only investigated after being contacted by Lilley and say they were already going through Duncan’s files.
Now each of the accused six members of the firm has hired other lawyers to fight these ethical claims against them. The Verrill Dana lawyers are basically saying they did nothing wrong because all they did was believe their own law partner.
If that’s their entire defense — the counter argument from Davis would need to be that when serious allegations of criminal conduct were alleged, the lawyers at Verrill Dana were required to do more than just question their partner and blindly accept his explanations.
A hearing is scheduled before Justice Donald Alexander — one of the brightest minds on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. So this is undoubtedly not the last time that Verrill Dana will appear on the front page of the Portland Press Herald.
But each time another article appears about alleged ethical violations at Verrill Dana, those who read it will think less and less of other lawyers in Maine and of the legal profession in general.
Comments