Panel wants lawyers disbarred

The state Board of Bar Overseers has recommended that the Supreme Judicial Court disbar two lawyers accused of using extortion and intimidation in an attempt to discredit a judge, who had ruled against their client in a family feud over assets of the Demoulas Supermarkets chain. The board recommended the suspension of a third lawyer.

In its decision, the board affirmed the May 2005 recommendation of a hearing officer that Gary C. Crossen and Kevin P. Curry be disbarred, but it softened the penalty recommended for Richard K. Donahue , another lawyer accused in the case, from disbarment to a three-year suspension because Donahue was the last to join in the scheme aimed at a law clerk and because he participated in the planning but not the execution of the effort.

The case will now go before a single Supreme Judicial Court who could send it to the full court.

Donahue is a former chairman of the Board of Bar Overseers, a former assistant to President Kennedy, and a onetime president of Nike Inc. Curry is a former state prosecutor. Crossen is a former federal and Suffolk County prosecutor, former chairman of the state Judicial Nominating Commission, and former ethics counsel to Governors William F. Weld and Paul Cellucci.

Crossen's attorney, Thomas Kiley , yesterday vowed to continue fighting until Crossen is exonerated.

"It is over nine years since this investigation began," Kiley said. "If it takes nine years to say something is wrong, it is not so clear it is wrong. We have maintained Gary's innocence under the rules applicable to lawyers from the outset. We are deeply disappointed that the majority of the board didn't see it our way. We will continue to battle until he is totally vindicated."

The disciplinary case against the three lawyers stems from actions they allegedly took in 1997, two years after Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Maria Lopez ruled that the heirs of George Demoulas, a cofounder of the $1.5 billion chain, had been cheated out of millions of dollars by other members of their family. Lopez ordered a massive transfer of assets.

The lawyers, who all worked at various times for the losing side in the case, engaged in an elaborate scheme to get information from Lopez's law clerk, Paul Walsh , to provide information that would allow them to discredit Lopez and invalidate the judgment, hearing officer M. Ellen Carpenter wrote in her May report.

The men first enticed Walsh with a bogus offer of a dream job, then threatened to harm his career if he did not cooperate with them, Carpenter concluded after lengthy hearings.

The lawyers contended that Lopez was biased against their client and that they were only trying to extract evidence from Walsh.

The three accused men and their lawyers disputed the findings of fact and the penalties recommended by Carpenter to the Board of Bar Overseers.

The three lawyers, Carpenter wrote in her report, "have left what one can only hope is not an indelible impression that lawyers, even very prominent ones, will do almost anything to prevail if enough money is at stake and available for their use."

Kiley had called Carpenter's findings the work of "a hearing officer with righteous hindsight."

The overseers held hearings on the matter in January and February. A 79-page memorandum of their findings and recommendations, issued Oct. 16, endorsed Carpenter's findings unanimously except for divisions on recommendations for Crossen and Donahue. The vote to disbar Crossen was 9 to 2 and Donahue's three-year suspension was approved, 7 to 4.

In their approval, the overseers repeat the hearing officer's characterization of the lawyers' approach to Walsh as repellent, and noted that "Crossen and Donahue had no compunction about continuing a cruel ruse and then callously attempting" threats and intimidation to make the clerk cooperate with them.

None of the accused or other lawyers involved returned calls for comment.

Jonathan Saltzman of the Globe staff contributed to this report.