Millard Farmer. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

Atlanta attorney Millard Farmer—who built his legal career as an aggressive and often controversial civil rights lawyer and death penalty foe—has been disbarred by the Supreme Court of Georgia.

The high court formally disbarred Farmer on Monday, finding that he engaged in "an extensive pattern of disciplinary infractions" during the course of representing a client in a long-running child custody case that made disbarment "the only appropriate sanction."

Farmer's conduct in the protracted custody battle between Michelle Murphy and her former husband, John Murphy, prompted John Murphy to sue Farmer in 2015. Murphy's suit contended that Farmer perverted the legal process and crossed a line into organized criminal behavior in an effort to extort payments from Murphy and his second wife, the founder and chief financial officer of a New York hedge fund.

After a weeklong trial last year, a federal jury in Atlanta determined that Farmer engaged in attempted theft by extortion, attempted bribery, intimidation of a court officer, influencing witnesses, interstate travel in aid of racketeering and interference with custody, and awarded John Murphy $242,835 in damages. Farmer, who was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia in 1967, represented himself. 

In disbarring Farmer, the Supreme Court said he violated 10 professional conduct rules. The high court also listed "multiple aggravating factors," including Farmer's "intentional noncompliance" with bar disciplinary proceedings, his mischaracterization of the facts, his "selfish" motives, his refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of his conduct, his substantial experience in the practice of law and his "apparent indifference to restitution" after Farmer failed to satisfy the racketeering judgment.

The high court's opinion also noted evidence that Farmer told Michelle Murphy that he wouldn't dismiss the custody case or permit her to mediate it unless he was paid $500,000 in legal fees.

The high court said that was the basis for the racketeering case after Farmer employed a tactic he branded as "conflictineering." That methodology was intended to disrupt the judicial process "to the point that either the court or the opposing party would simply capitulate for the sake of restoring order," the high court held. 

According to the disbarment ruling, in litigating the Murphy custody case, Farmer repeatedly filed frivolous motions, pursued baseless appeals, and routinely attacked the parties, the trial judge, the court staff and other participants in the litigation who took positions contrary to his client.

At one point, Farmer sued the trial judge's court reporter after filing a professional grievance against her, and accused the trial judge of bias and corruption. Those complaints were all dismissed.

According to the high court, Farmer also threatened witnesses at least twice and revealed confidential information that one expert witness, a former client of Farmer's, disclosed to him while he was representing her.

The high court also noted that Farmer, after filing an answer to the bar complaint that didn't comply with bar rules, stopped participating in the disciplinary proceedings.

In 2015, the State Bar of Georgia dismissed an earlier complaint that John Murphy filed against Farmer, claiming the custody case on which the complaint was based was still in litigation. But Buddy Parker, John Murphy's attorney in the racketeering case, said at the time that Murphy would refile the bar complaint once the custody case was resolved.

On Monday, Farmer called the bar disciplinary process "dishonest" and said his disbarment was "a byproduct of the illegal conduct of various entities, including judges, opposing counsel, and bar investigators.

"What aggravated them is that I represented a person who was not allowed her rights," he said.

After filing a response to John Murphy's renewed bar complaint, Farmer claimed he was "forced out" of ongoing disciplinary procedure "because I was not going to subject myself to being disciplined by an illegal process."

Farmer also said that allegations that he sought $500,000 in legal fees were "false statements." Instead, he insisted that he represented Michelle Murphy pro bono.

Farmer also said that he surrendered the house he and his wife owned and his law office to satisfy the racketeering judgment.

On Monday, Parker said that Farmer "intentionally caused much emotional pain and anguish to many people in his effort to 'shake down' and extort monies" and damage reputations of those he viewed as opponents. 

Parker said Farmer's victims included "a wholly innocent court reporter just doing her job who Millard caused to be criminally investigated and whose career was threatened," and the Superior Court judge who presided over the custody case that Parker said Millard disparaged.