Defense to Disbarment for Theft: My Partners Drove Me to It

It’s not your typical way of mounting a defense in a disciplinary case.

Charged with misappropriating $5,000 from his firm, Ronald Nelson admits taking the money but blames his former law partners for driving him to it by their lack of accountability. He claims their behavior mitigates his own wrong and urges that the mitigating factors be considered in imposing discipline, which in such cases is usually disbarment.

Nelson was a partner with Craner, Nelson, Satkin & Scheer in Scotch Plains until the firm discovered his filching and ousted him on Oct. 13, 2000.

The ethics complaint, filed last July 15 by the judge in a related civil suit, charges Nelson with violating Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(b), prohibiting criminal behavior that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer, and 8.4(c), which bars conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.

The complaint charges that Nelson wrote two checks on the firm’s trust account, for $4,000 and $1,000, to pay for personal services and then placed letters in a file to make it appear the payments were related to a case.

All true, Nelson admits. In his July 31 answer, he says he apologized and made restitution. There was no client harm and “no risk of repetitious conduct,” he says.

But Nelson goes on to explain that he took the money not out of greed but out of his “extraordinary frustration, disappointment, and anger” over his partners’ “refusal to address . . . and correct concerns about their declining accountability on matters of business practices, competence, and ethics.”

Nelson’s alleges that his colleagues:

� Used a firm notary to authenticate the signature of a partner’s dead relative.

� Mishandled a matrimonial matter so badly that a court imposed sanctions.

� Shared fees by a partner, who is not a certified attorney, with a referring attorney who did no work on the case, and encouraged similar improper fee-splitting by an associate.

� Charged personal expenses to the firm.

� Missed case deadlines or limitations periods without informing the client or the firm’s malpractice carrier.

� Represented a client’s employee in forming a competing business.

In a May 6 letter to Deputy Ethics Counsel Janice Richter, Nelson told of his “maddening anger occasioned by my frustrated failure to right the course of a law firm to which I had devoted 30 years of my professional and personal life.” The letter, an exhibit to the ethics complaint and answer, terms the misappropriation “a singular act” that “stands as a perverse footnote to my life and to my character.”

Nelson does not name names but the firm, now known as Craner, Satkin & Scheer, has three principals: John Craner, Stephen Satkin and M. Richard Scheer.

Craner, speaking for himself, Satkin and Scheer, denies Nelson’s accusations and says they are no defense to the charges against Nelson. “We had a perfect right to terminate him because he had embezzled,” says Craner.

Nelson declines to elaborate on his accusations but points to the fact that he kept his clients as a vindication. “There is no greater indication of value as an attorney,” he says.

Nelson’s lawyer, Richard Schachter, a partner with Somerville’s Schachter, Trombadore, Offen, Stanton & Pavics, declines comment.

CIVIL SUIT LEADS TO ETHICS CASE