Recommendation shocking to some in Boston legal circles
Even for lawyers used to being shocked by the twists and turns of the epic legal battle over the Demoulas supermarket fortune, the news that a hearing officer with the state Board of Bar Overseers had recommended disbarment for three lawyers involved in the case was a stunner.
Word that the lawyers, including two who were at one time arguably among the state's most prominent attorneys, could face the harshest possible discipline reverberated through legal offices and law libraries yesterday, igniting a debate about exactly what the short- and long-term ramifications of the decision would be.
''I am stunned," said Paul V. Kelly, a Boston lawyer and former colleague of Gary C. Crossen, one of the lawyers facing disbarment. ''I think some of us anticipated the possibility of some kind of a modest suspension, but not this."
M. Ellen Carpenter, the special hearing officer appointed to the case, recommended disbarment for Crossen, a former federal prosecutor and ethics adviser to former governors; Richard K. Donahue, a former president of
Carpenter found that all three had breached the rules of legal ethics for their participation in an elaborate ruse aimed at a law clerk to former Superior Court judge Maria Lopez, the presiding judge in the Demoulas case. Carpenter concluded that the three had lied under oath and tried to mislead her about their role in the scheme, designed to trick the clerk into disclosing damaging information about Lopez's alleged bias against their clients.
Several local lawyers and legal ethics specialists said yesterday that they expected Carpenter's 229-page decision to have a long-term effect on the legal practice in the state. At least two law professors interviewed said they planned to use the decision as a case study, and one said he would probably include it as a chapter in an upcoming edition of his ethics textbook.
Judy McMorrow, a professor of legal ethics at Boston College Law School, called the decision ''a real wake-up call" for lawyers who believe that they can bend or break ethics rules in the name of zealously representing their clients.
''It's a reminder that you should represent clients competently and zealously, but always within the bounds of the law and . . . the rules of ethics," McMorrow said.
Robert A. Griffith, a prominent Boston litigator, said he believed the decision would have a chilling effect on the willingness of lawyers to confront a judge about a perceived bias.
''I think that will be carved out as an area where you just don't go, no matter what," he said. Griffith was once reprimanded by the board and suspended from practicing law for a year by the Supreme Judicial Court for concealing a client's HIV status from defendants in a police brutality case. ''It's a tough decision."
Others, particularly those close to the three lawyers, focused on what they called the draconian nature of Carpenter's recommended penalty. Kelly contended that Crossen has a well-deserved reputation for honesty and ethics and said ''the notion of disbarment is a travesty of justice."
A close lawyer friend of Donahue's called the decision a ''tragedy."
Former state bar counsel Arnold Rosenfeld said that he believed the matter of the three lawyers would live on in Boston legal memory, but the unique nature of the Demoulas affair made it difficult to draw wider lessons.
Few lawyers, he said, would have even thought to go to the lengths Curry, Crossen, and Donahue allegedly did to try to show bias by a judge.
''I thought I had seen them all," said Rosenfeld, who is now in private practice. ''But I hadn't seen anything like this one." 