Lawyer charged with pocketing cash and album
A Columbus lawyer faces professional-misconduct charges for allegedly accepting thousands of dollars in legal fees and a band-autographed copy of The Who’s “Quadrophenia” album while performing minimal work on a client’s cases.
Timothy Dougherty also faces disciplinary charges before the Board of Professional Conduct accusing him of improperly allowing suspended lawyer Chris Cicero to provide legal advice to his client.
Dougherty is one of four Columbus-area lawyers who faces hearings before board panels that could lead to the suspension of their law licenses, the Ohio Supreme Court announced Wednesday.
The case against Dougherty says he agreed to file a lawsuit on a client’s behalf in April 2011 while defending her against a collections matter in another case. Within two years, the client had paid Dougherty $5,700 in fees and also given him a copy of her album signed by the famed rock band, The Who, to hold as collateral against coming legal fees.
The client met Dougherty at the one-time law office of Cicero, who was suspended for ethical violations that included disclosing a wouldbe client’s confidences to then-Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel. Cicero informed Tressel about some of his players’ improper conduct underlying the so-called tattoo scandal in 2010-11 that led to Tressel’s ouster.
Dougherty introduced Cicero to his client as his law partner, and Cicero advised the woman to fire the lawyer representing her in another case, the charges state. Cicero later was indefinitely suspended for filing falsified paperwork to fix a speeding ticket he faced.
Three years after retaining Dougherty, the client asked for an accounting of legal fees and the return of her Who album, which she said was worth thousands of dollars. Dougherty never provided an accounting of fees or returned the album while performing little legal work for the woman, the charges state. In the other three cases:
Columbus lawyer Trent Turner is accused of mishandling a female client’s case by plagiarizing another’s lawyer motion, failing to return unearned legal fees and co-mingling personal funds in his client-funds trust account. He also is accused of having sex with the client. Lawyers are forbidden to have sex with clients unless the relationship preceded legal representation.
Gahanna lawyer Bradley Keating is charged with failing to properly distribute funds to third parties while representing auto-accident clients who were advised to visit a certain chiropractor. While collecting settlements on behalf of clients, Keating failed to pay $6,280 owed to a chiropractor visited by his clients, the Columbus Bar Association alleged in the case.
John Patterson, a lawyer who serves as executive director of the Accountancy Board of Ohio, is accused of improperly placing personal funds in a client trust account, although he had not practiced privately since 2000 when he became an assistant attorney general. Patterson also is accused of lying to investigators about the account.