Tex McIver (left) and defense attorney Don Samuel react to the Fulton County jury announcing guilty verdicts against McIver for the killing of his wife. (Pool photo: Bob Andres/AJC)

Cases involving allegations of lawyer misconduct are always intriguing, but some of the biggest trials of 2018 stretched the boundaries of the usual fare.

There was the high-flying residential real estate lawyer now bound for prison after looting his firm for millions of dollars to fund a taste for gambling, private jets and women.

There was also the national attention focused on the trial of a former senior partner at employment firm Fisher & Phillips who will spend the rest of his life behind bars for murdering his wife in downtown Atlanta.

First up in our two-part year in review, we have a look back at the big trials targeting the misdeeds of two attorneys.

Tex McIver's Murder Trial

Securing the murder conviction of prominent Atlanta lawyer Claud “Tex” McIver in April over the 2016 shooting of his wife wasn't a sure bet for Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

Police who investigated the death of Diane McIver as she rode in an SUV through downtown Atlanta initially believed the shooting was an accident. Although McIver repeatedly changed his story of how the gun went off while he was sleeping in the back seat, no motive for her murder was readily apparent.

But after McIver attempted to persuade the driver, Dani Jo Carter, to lie to police and deny she was in the car, Carter told Howard's prosecutors she no longer believed the shooting an accident.

Prosecutors quietly began to focus on money as a motive. McIver had lost his lucrative partnership at Atlanta's Fisher & Phillips, and his income had plummeted while the couple's lavish lifestyle remained intact.

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Moreover, the McIvers—who kept their finances separate—were fighting over who would inherit an 80-acre ranch they jointly owned near Lake Oconee. When she died, Diane McIver held a $350,000 promissory note from her husband that he had collateralized with his share of the ranch. He had already defaulted once.

A forensic accountant who examined the McIvers' finances discovered that Diane McIver was regularly giving her husband thousands of dollars to keep his bank accounts in the black, and her death gave Tex McIver control over her lucrative estate and a quick cash infusion of more than $1 million.

Following a six-week trial, the jury appeared deadlocked before handing down a split verdict convicting McIver of felony murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and influencing a witness. The jury cleared him of malice murder.

McIver defense lawyers Don Samuel and Bruce Harvey have filed a motion for a new trial, which is pending. Meanwhile, McIver has begun serving a life sentence.

Nathan Hardwick enters the U.S. courthouse in Atlanta in his trial on charges of embezzlement. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

Nathan Hardwick's Embezzlement Conviction

Federal prosecutors convicted Atlanta lawyer Nathan Hardwick IV of embezzling $26 million from his now-bankrupt, residential real estate closing and foreclosure firm, Morris Hardwick Schneider, in a hard-fought, three-week trial in October.

The 12 jurors did not buy Hardwick's defense that he thought the funds were legitimately due him as the firm's majority owner, and convicted him of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 21 counts of wire fraud and one count of making false statements to federally insured banks. Jurors deliberated for nine hours over two days after 12 days of witness testimony held in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

MHS personnel and title insurer Fidelity National Title's forensic accountants discovered millions in escrow account shortfalls in 2014 for the Atlanta-based firm's closing operation, which Hardwick ran. Hardwick received $19.5 million alone from the firm's IOLTA accounts to pay bills to casinos and private jet companies—and to his personal holding company, Divot Holdings, which he used to pay women, creditors and other expenses.

Hardwick's minority partners, Mark and Gerard Wittstadt, ousted him from the firm after the shortfalls came to light, and Fidelity poured almost $30 million into MHS's IOLTA accounts. Even so, the firm went bankrupt 11 months later.

Hardwick testified that he thought the $26 million, which he asked MHS's then-controller, Asha Maurya, to disburse to him between 2011 and 2014, was coming from available cash in the firm's operating accounts, not its escrow accounts.

Prosecutors told the jury that MHS's equity partners were only supposed to get payouts from the firm's net income, which totaled just under $10 million from 2011 to 2013, according to the firm's audited financial statements.

Hardwick's lawyers, led by Ed Garland with Robin Loeb and Kristen Novay of Garland, Samuel & Loeb, told the jury that Maurya was the sole culprit, not Hardwick.

Maurya, who has admitted taking almost $900,000 from MHS, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy last year and is cooperating with the government, but prosecutors did not call her to testify.

Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Russell Phillips, who tried the case with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Doug Gilfillan and Lynsey Barron, told Judge Eleanor Ross after the verdict that the government would ask for a sentence of roughly 15 years. Hardwick, 53, was taken into custody and his sentencing hearing is scheduled for January.