{"id":4488,"date":"2003-06-19T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2003-06-19T16:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2003\/06\/19\/tighter-guardian-rules-in-dc\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T15:00:53","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T19:00:53","slug":"tighter-guardian-rules-in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/06\/19\/tighter-guardian-rules-in-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"Tighter Guardian Rules in D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a69'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">The <I><STRONG><A href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A7300-2003Jun17.html\">Washington Post<\/A><\/STRONG><\/I> reported yesterday (6\/18\/03) that Chief Judge Rufus G. King III, of D.C. Superior Court, had &#8220;ordered stricter requirements and heightened scrutiny aimed at preventing guardians from neglecting or victimizing residents they were appointed to protect.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">The new rules are a quick response to <I>WashPost<\/I> investigative reporting, which we covered <B><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/06\/14#a61 \">here<\/A><\/B> earlier this week, and which should have shamed the court and the bar.&nbsp; According to the <I>Post<\/I>, in an article by Carol Leonnig and Lena Sun, the rules would go into effect immediately and would:<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">bar attorneys from being paid for work until they certify they have recently checked on their clients&#8217; health and fully accounted for their money. <\/FONT><br \/>\n<LI><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">prohibit attorneys from receiving new appointments if there are any pending ethical complaints against them.<\/FONT><\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">The article added that &#8220;the court would begin to keep better track of attorneys who are failing in their duties and that the court would send auditors to nursing homes and banks to spot-check attorneys&#8217; work.&#8221;&nbsp; In addition, the Register of Wills, who runs the probate division, would be&nbsp;asked &#8220;to perform random audits, including calling relatives, as a way to more quickly catch abuses or dishonest lawyers.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">The <I>Post<\/I> also quotes <STRONG>Kelly Bagby<\/STRONG>, senior attorney for University Legal Services, an advocacy group for the mentally ill and retarded: &#8220;If people are going to put their law license on the line by neglecting their clients and their duties, there&#8217;s nothing to say their sworn declarations are truthful either.&#8221;&nbsp; Bagby&nbsp;added, &#8220;And how would the register of wills, who has failed to notice for six years when an attorney filed no reports, track a list of attorneys with problems?&#8221; <\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">For now, <STRONG><I>ethicalEsq? <\/I>has more faith in the <EM>Washington Post<\/EM>&#8216;s<\/STRONG><EM> <\/EM>willingness and ability to play an active and effective watchdog role than in the Court and Probate officials.&nbsp; One big remaining question, of course, is just what the D.C. Bar&#8217;s ethics counsel plans to do about this scandal.<\/FONT><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"> <\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><br \/>\n<P align=\"center\"><EM><STRONG><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\">ethicalEsq?ethicalEsq?ethicalEsq?<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/EM><\/P><br \/>\n<P align=\"left\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\"><STRONG>Thanks<\/STRONG> to Mike at <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.corplawblog.com\/\"><STRONG><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\">CorpLawBlog<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/A><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\">&nbsp;for highlighting yesterday&#8217;s <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/06\/18\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\">posting<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\"> on Fees and Fiduciaries, including a lengthy quote.<\/FONT> <\/FONT><\/P><\/FONT><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post reported yesterday (6\/18\/03) that Chief Judge Rufus G. King III, of D.C. Superior Court, had &#8220;ordered stricter requirements and heightened scrutiny aimed at preventing guardians from neglecting or victimizing residents they were appointed to protect.&#8221; The new rules are a quick response to WashPost investigative reporting, which we covered here earlier this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1ao","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14263,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488\/revisions\/14263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}