An Equal Playing Field

Dear Readers, I have written before, about how attorneys "police their own." This is in stark contrast to, say, the medical community, where butchers can injure patient after patient and never be stripped of their privilege to practice medicine. Of course, to be fair, lawyers lose their bar license for ethical reasons which may or may not have anything to do with clients being injured.

Attorneys can't help but fight for clients. Most of us try to do so ethically, but we still have to spend unseemly sums of our operating budgets trying to make sure our "name" is out there and potential clients know whom we are. When it comes to personal injury cases, we are barred from directly contacting people injured by someone else's handiwork until more than 30 days after the injury was suffered. So, if we pass a horrible wreck, we cannot directly approach an injured person (or the family) and solicit their business.

Ah, but "ambulance" chasing attorneys get around this rule. What they do is hire "runners," often underpaid traffic officers, orderlies in hospitals, paramedics, tow-truck drivers or people in similar job capacities, to act as their agents in securing the injured person as a new client. To say this upsets the rest of us practicing the "right way" is a mild observation; this is especially a problem in Atlanta.

In the past, frankly, the State Bar has probably treated transgressors with insufficient punishment – minor license suspensions or public reprimands are far from a deterrent in obtaining a significant competitive advantage over the rest of us. This is not true with respect to the recent decision rendered by the Georgia Supreme Court (the final arbiters of punishment for bar violations) concerning Steven F. Freedman and Thomas C. Sinowski.

With the investigation stemming back to 2002, justice came very slow with respect to allegations against them. Each was charged with violating Standards 12 (lawyer shall not solicit professional employment through direct personal contact with a non-lawyer who has not sought his advice regarding employment of a lawyer), 13 (lawyer shall not compensate a person to recommend or secure employment by a client or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in employment by a client) and 26 (lawyer shall not share legal fees with a non-lawyer) of Bar Rule 4-102.

They tried to wiggle out of these violations with just a public reprimand; a "special master" appointed to investigate recommended only a 1-year suspension. Their argument for leniency was that similar unreported situations had resulted in punishments on the light side. The Supreme Court, thankfully, ruled such an argument as "out-of-bounds."

For four (4) years, Freedman and Sinowski paid 46 and 54 runners, between $276,000.00 and $399,000.00 in between 1376 and 2441 cases (there was a dispute as to these numbers) to solicit clients. In other words, we are talking about millions of dollars worth of fees in just this short time-span. In reported cases of similar violations, the penalty ranged from disbarment to as little as a 1-year suspension (but in these case there were no "aggravating factors").

In this case, the scheme was found to be lucrative, wide-ranging, sophisticated, and long-lasting, and Freedman and Sinowski were not remorseful, as found by the Supreme Court. Hence, the special master's recommendation and ordered them disbarred.

I don't know how much money Freedman and Sinowski actually earned by their actions. There is no allegation that they actually injured any of their clients; just that they besmirched the practice by "buying" their clients through the use of runners. They also stole business from other, honest, attorneys by rigging the system that potential clients normally use to select an attorney – research and word-of-mouth.

This ultimate result set by the Georgia Supreme Court should warn against similar activities. I certainly hope it means that I am competing in a fair legal market in the Middle Georgia area.

Local attorney Jim Rockefeller owns the Rockefeller Law Center and is a former Houston Co. Chief Assistant District Attorney, and a former Miami Prosecutor.