The general counsel at TBC Corp., parent company of auto repair company Midas, has received a two-year stayed suspension after working as an in-house lawyer in both Florida and Texas while suspended in Ohio for failing to satisfy continuing legal education requirements.

In an opinion issued last week, the Ohio Supreme Court said that it “by no means condone[s]” Brian Maciak's nearly seven-year failure to complete the state's biennial CLE requirements. But “the specific and narrow facts of Maciak's proven misconduct [and] the substantial evidence of his good character and remorse” warranted the punishment, the court added. Disciplinary counsel had urged the court to issue an unstayed suspension from the practice of law, while the Board of Professional Conduct recommended the two-year stayed suspension that the court ultimately imposed.

Maciak could not be reached for comment.

According to the opinion, the Ohio Supreme Court fined Maciak, of Jupiter, Florida, in late 2009 for failure to complete his CLE requirements and suspended him in 2011 for the same conduct. That suspension remained in effect until November 2015. (He previously had been suspended in late 2007 for failure to register as an attorney, but his license was reinstated less than two months later.)

Maciak has served as the general counsel of TBC in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for the past nine years and previously worked in-house for Irving, Texas-based Michaels Stores as an associate general counsel.

After a three-day hearing, a panel of the Board of Professional Conduct found that from 2009, when Maciak became the top lawyer at TBC, until he became certified as an “authorized house counsel” in Florida, he engaged in the unauthorized practice of law, according to the Supreme Court's opinion.

Although the panel found that Maciak was “cavalier, inattentive, negligent, and foolish” with regard to his ethical duties, it also “was impressed with Maciak's emotional apology, and the testimony from multiple witnesses who attested to his integrity, good character, and reputation for honesty,” the Ohio Supreme Court noted.

In oral arguments before the state's high court last October, Maciak's attorney, Jonathan Coughlan of Kegler Brown Hill + Ritter in Columbus, Ohio, said that his client was unaware that his work in-house in Texas and Florida was an unauthorized practice of law.

He also defended his client by saying that Maciak could have forgotten about a phone call acknowledging his suspension in Ohio because it was during the time he led the acquisition of Midas by TBC.

Coughlan also argued that even though Maciak did not fill out the proper paperwork to certify his CLE credits during the times in question, he did in fact attend training and events to obtain the credits.

Coughlan said in an email that he and his client were pleased with, though not surprised by, the Ohio high court's stayed suspension.

“We knew all along that Brian had been truthful and accepted responsibility for his administrative mistake,” according to the email.