{"id":4753,"date":"2004-03-08T11:59:43","date_gmt":"2004-03-08T15:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/03\/08\/you-know-hes-lying-when\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:58","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:58","slug":"you-know-hes-lying-when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/03\/08\/you-know-hes-lying-when\/","title":{"rendered":"You Know He’s Lying When . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

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When we <\/FONT>reported<\/FONT><\/A> that prominent New York lawyer Jonathan A. Weinstein was disbarred on Feb. 19, 2004, the court’s opinion was not online.   The <\/FONT>decision<\/FONT><\/A> is now available and paints a portrait of arrogance, deception and greed that deserve the ultimate professional punishment, despite the surprisingly unblemished prior record of attorney Weinstein.  <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Only three client matters were at the core of the 32 original counts of misconduct brought against Weinstein.  [Much of the chicanery involved matters in which Weinstein worked with a heir-locator service that took significant percentages of recovered inheritances (often 33% and 25% percent), but the Court noted that such services are not illegal.]  The Appellate Division concluded, after reviewing the detailed facts that:<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Respondent in this case has engaged in a pattern of deliberately false and deceptive conduct, including distortions of fact to clients, courts and the Committee, undertaken for purposes of self-aggrandizement and in an arrogant and devious manner. Moreover, in addition to the conversion, respondent has failed to preserve escrow funds, charged and collected an excessive fee, solicited clients and sought part of their share even though he was not retained by them (causing them to expend money to defend against his claim and delaying the distribution of the estate). In addition, these proceedings have been marked by his repeated misrepresentations, lack of candor or remorse and failure to acknowledge any misconduct in all three client matters involved herein. <\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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The details are too complex to get into here, but reading the opinion is edifying.  I particularly enjoyed the Referee’s reasoning when he rejected Respondent’s claims that certain factual errors were unintentional:<\/FONT><\/P>
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you forgot what?<\/FONT><\/EM><\/STRONG>  \"laughing . .<\/FONT><\/P>
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We agree with both the Referee and the Panel that charges 17-20, which concern respondent’s false representations in the Surrogate’s Court petition and in a July 6, 1999 affidavit in support of a subsequent fee application that the distributees other than Dalton were paying him a 25% fee and the additional statement in the latter that the court in the Labutis<\/I> matter awarded respondent a 33% fee, should be sustained. The Referee found respondent’s assertion that these statements “were made not knowing they were false, simply incredible. . . . [It is] highly unlikely that respondent could have forgotten or misremembered such an important detail as his fees in the Dalton and Labutis matters. His fees are, apparently what he is principally concerned about<\/STRONG>.” <\/FONT>  <\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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If you’re thinking, “this guy must have some pretty good connections to think he could get away with this conduct,” you may be right.  As <\/FONT>NYLJ noted<\/FONT><\/A>: <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Mr. Weinstein, 62, is the son of Moses M. Weinstein, a former justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department. Before his election to the bench, he was a Democratic Party leader in Queens and majority leader in the state Assembly for two years. <\/FONT>
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Mr. Weinstein’s brother, Queens Supreme Court Justice Jeremy S. Weinstein, is currently the supervising judge of the Civil Court in that borough.<\/FONT><\/P><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we reported that prominent New York lawyer Jonathan A. Weinstein was disbarred on Feb. 19, 2004, the court’s opinion was not online.   The decision is now available and paints a portrait of arrogance, deception and greed that deserve the ultimate professional punishment, despite the surprisingly unblemished prior record of attorney Weinstein.    Only three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4753","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-1eF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4753","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=4753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13936,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4753\/revisions\/13936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}