A court attorney in the Brooklyn Family Court was publicly censured for not disclosing on her application to the New York bar that she had been arrested for shoplifting as a teenager.

A panel of the Appellate Division, Second Department, said that in determining the appropriate punishment for Natasha McDougall, the supervising court attorney for Brooklyn Family Court Supervising Judge Jeanette Ruiz (See Profile) since January 2013, it took into account the “high regard” with which she is held by her peers and Ruiz, who testified on McDougall's behalf.

According to court documents, in August 1993, McDougall was caught trying to shoplift clothes from Bloomingdales in Manhattan. McDougall, 16 at the time, was in the store with other girls and remembered doing it on a dare.