NEW BOOK (SEE BELOW) !
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Arizona Attorneys Against Corrupt Professional Regulation
AZAACPR
Informing About the State Bar of Arizona
Exposing Wrongful Policies and Practices
Providing Guidance to Attorneys, the Public, and Bar Applicants
READ THIS BOOK!
SHAMING JUSTICE
The Arizona State Bar and Supreme Court
ISBN-13 978-0692478189
FOR SALE AS OF JULY, 2015 ON AMAZON.COM
Inquiries: This Website (www.azaacpr.org),
Webpage "Contact AZAACPR"
1. About the State Bar of Arizona: Establishment of SBA
2. SBA and the Arizona Supreme Court
3. Arizona Supreme Court's Role in Attorney Admissions and Discipline
4. How SBA Creates Corruption in Other Arizona Government Agencies
5. SBA Abuses of Prosecution Not Limited to Arizona Attorneys
6. Why This Website?
(1) About the State Bar of Arizona: Establishment of SBA
By Rules of the Arizona Supreme Court, the State Bar of Arizona is created as a subentity of the Arizona Supreme Court and as a not-for-profit corporation. SBA is empowered to sue or be sued, to enter into contracts, to deal in property, and to implement policies of the Arizona Supreme Court. (17A Arizona Revised Statutes [A.R.S.] Rules of the Supreme Court of Arizona, R. 32.) SBA is not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with services to Arizona attorneys. For example, one of its most active roles consists of lobbying the Arizona Legislature.
Lawyers are not exclusively regulated by the judiciary in all states, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon being exceptions.
In the opinion of AZAACPR, the Arizona Supreme Court has evinced an incapacity to regulate Arizona lawyers without abusing standards of fairness and the dignity and rights of individuals engaged in the practice of law. AZAACPR takes the position that, because SBA has manifested an incapacity to avoid harms to the legal profession and to the public, the Arizona Bar would better be operated by the Arizona Legislature.
AZAACPR calls upon the Arizona Legislature to pass legislation separating the State Bar of Arizona from the Arizona Courts and Judiciary.
In January, 2016, led by Chief Sponsor Rep. Anthony Kern, two bills were introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives, both with the intent of abolishing mandatory membership in SBA as a precondition for practicing law in Arizona and with returning key functions now handled by SBA to the government (the Supreme Court of Arizona). These are HB 2219 and 2221. Interested readers may peruse www.icarizona.com/2016/01/two-bills-introduced-in-arizona.state.html. In February, although HB 2219 did not pass the House, HB 2221 did pass the House. On March 9, 2016, the Arizona Senate's Government Committee passed HB 2221. On March 28, 2016, HB 2221 was approved by the Senate Committee of the Whole. On May 5, 2016, however, HB 2221 did not survive final vote in the Senate. The endeavor to impose sensible restrictions on SBA may resume in the fall of 2016. News about future efforts, any other committee meetings, and other events and information are likely to be posted on a website workingforabetterbar.org.
In the meantime, underscoring why the effort must go on, SBA famously initiated reprisals against members who publicly expressed support for the objectives of the House of Representatives Study Committee (see [2] below) whose work culminated in HB 2219 and HB 2221. At the Arizona Senate Government Committee meeting on March 9, 2016, a member who twice commented in public comments portions of Study Committee sessions, Karyl Krug, announced that SBA had put a target on her back: ten days after she made a second public comment, SBA sent her a lengthy document - it was addressed to the Arizona Supreme Court, it charged Krug with professional misconduct, and it included a written directive addressed to Krug. The directive outlined no specific allegations but it demanded her response. Krug's statement is recorded in the legislature's video of the proceeding. See http://azleg.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=26&clip_id=17236 at 02:27:40 to 02:28:20. Also in the public comments portion of the same video, a member, Mr. Stutsman, reports that for repeatedly complaining in writing about increasing Bar dues, he received a written notice from SBA CEO John Phelps threatening disciplinary action.
Arizona-licensed attorneys who belong to the Federal Bar and who may be willing to undertake litigation against SBA and against certain of its and of the Arizona Supreme Court's officials involved in misuse of discipline against SBA members, especially if HB 2221 passes and membership in SBA becomes non-mandatory, are asked to contact this website.
(2) SBA and the Arizona Supreme Court
The Arizona Supreme Court does not disclose how much money it collects for its operations from SBA impositions on lawyers.
John Phelps, CEO and Executive Director of the State Bar of Arizona, has stated publicly that no public money is used for SBA operations, and that in particular, its disciplinary apparatus is funded exclusively from impositions on SBA members.
See http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/07/13/20120713state-bar-regulatory-agency-phelps.html.
A summary budget published by the SBA states that in 2010, SBA had annual "support and revenues" of some $14.6 million. This figure does not separate out mandatory member contributions from donations by interested parties. The 2010 budget does show that over $174,000 of "support and revenues" derived from "Lawyer Regulation" and around $55,000 from payments to the so-called "Member Assistance Program" (MAP). In 2011, the MAP figure was nearly the same but the revenue from "Lawyer Regulation" had increased to almost $205,000. (See State Bar of Arizona Independent Auditor's Report and Financial Statements, p. 3 ["Statements of Activities for the Years Ended December 31, 2011 and 2010"] at http://www.azbar.org/media/418951/state_bar_of_arizona_iar___fs_2011_client_copy.pdf; and, for further updates, see http://www.azbar.org/aboutus/leadership/boardofgovernors/importantissues/
proposedduesincrease/financialstatementsandaudits.)
SBA's 2009 net assets were in excess of $6.5 million. This is related to the fact that, for many years, the Arizona Bar has demanded nearly the highest member impositions (dues augmented by other required payments) of any state bar in the USA. (See Joey A. Flynn, "From the President's Desk," The Writ [publication of the Pima County Bar Association, Tucson, Arizona], p. 3, July, 2009.) And the Bar's appetite for members' money is not on the wane; as of 2015, for active Arizona Bar members in practice at least three years, the Arizona Supreme Court, in an Administrative Order No. 2014-32, has decreed that there will be a $15/year dues increase for that year and each of the three successive years. (See https://www.azcourts.gov/Portals/22/admorder/Orders14/2014-32.pdf.)
SBA employs numerous Staff Bar Counsel. In May, 2011, the number of lawyers employed was twenty. (See www.azbar.org "Find an Attorney" search function.) By comparison, in 2012 the number of bar counsel employed by the State Bar of New Mexico was seven. (See www.nmbar.org "Find an Attorney" search function.)
Neither the SBA nor the Arizona Supreme Court has publicly explained how or why Arizona attorneys, compared with their colleagues in an adjacent state, require nearly three times more supervising Staff Bar Counsel to exercise disciplinary oversight.
By standards of attorney salaries offered by other Arizona employers, SBA Staff Bar Counsel is a generously compensated position. In 2011, newly hired SBA Staff Bar Counsel started at about $80,000 per year. (See www.azbar.org Career Center listings.) SBA publicly discloses its annual IRS income tax filings. (See www.azbar.org/aboutus/financialstatements/ and click on links for Forms 990 at the lower left on the webpage.) For tax year 2013, SBA has reported the annual compensation of some (not all) of its leading salaried officials, including a salary for CEO John F. Phelps at $180,412; for Deputy CEO and General Counsel John A. Furlong, $138,519; for Chief Bar Counsel Maret Vessella, $136,313; for Amy Rehm, Deputy Chief Bar Counsel, $126,150; for Patricia Sallen, so-called "Director of Special Services," $111,739; for Elizabeth H. Deane, Chief Member Services Officer, $118,909; for Lisa Fontes, Advertising Services Manager, $118,192. Each of these figures exceeds the salary of the Governor of Arizona. SBA's reported total for official compensation and other salaries and wages approaches seven million dollars annually.
In the autumn of 2015, the Arizona House of Representatives, led by Rep. Anthony Kern, convened a series of public sessions at the capitol in Phoenix about the mandatory obligation of Arizona lawyers to join the state bar organization (Arizona House of Representatives Ad Hoc Study Committee on Mandatory Bar Associations). Videos of the four sessions may be accessed at http://azleg.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=22. (Also, a summary of the October 19, 2015, Study Committee session is available at www.icarizona.com/2015/10/az-bar-ceo-arrogantly-ridicules.html.) SBA's CEO John F. Phelps stated at one of the public sessions on October 26, 2015, that SBA has 98 salaried employees. At another session, on December 7, 2015, attorney and former SBA "member of the year" (i.e., SBA insider) Denise Blommel stated that for government to replace the disciplinary counsel ("Staff Bar Counsel") of SBA with employees of the state Supreme Court, it would be necessary to fill forty positions and the annual taxpayer cost would be $8 million dollars. It is questionable whether any other bar organization in the USA employs as many as even half this number of overpaid lawyers to keep the rest of its members in line.
Shockingly, SBA CEO John Phelps has publicly admitted that it is even worse than that. At the March 9, 2016, Senate Government Committee meeting alluded to above (see [1] para 6), Phelps (who has at other sessions before the House of Representative admitted that SBA has 98 employed staff) admitted that not forty, but forty-five of these staff are engaged in attorney discipline - that is, nearly half of SBA's workforce of employees! No other lawyer disciplinary body in the USA engages such a ridiculously oversized workforce to discipline its states' lawyers.
The bloated and overcompensated Staff Bar Counsel cabal naturally must justify its existence and income, and does so largely by imposing "discipline" on fellow attorney SBA members, much of which is frivolously grounded.
AZAACPR has been unable to determine how much funding the Court receives annually from SBA. As to SBA, annually it puts up a slate of persons it permits to run in a sham election for a seat on its voluntary "Board of Governors." To get on the slate, it is virtually mandatory that one belong to one of several mega-sized private Phoenix law firms--small-firm and solo practice lawyers are excluded from participating or having a say in SBA policies or operations. SBA officials and the SBA-selected cabal of fat-cat big-firm lawyers on the BOG run the show. SBA is notoriously opposed to transparency when it comes to SBA's own operations; it yields up to the public only scanty and incomplete information about how much money it spends on what purposes; and won't say how much money members pay to support how many employees involved in lawyer discipline, nor what those employees' (including the Presiding Disciplinary Judge's) current salaries are. SBA publicly gives the rationale that since it is a private corporation, it is immune from open meetings and public records laws. To give one example of the lack of transparency, at the October 19, 2015, Study Committee session of the House of Representatives alluded to above, SBA CEO John Phelps stated that currently, SBA had 98 employees and that the 2015 SBA total budget is $15.1 million and that this comes from the following sources: member dues $9.2mil, Continuing Legal Education sales $1.9mil, and "other income" $3.9 mil. (These comments appear about 20 minutes into the videotape of the Study Committee session, which can be viewed online at the Arizona Legislature website address cited above.) It is anybody's guess how much of the "other income" comes from impositions against lawyers for discipline. But it can be reasonably surmised that all or nearly all of the $3.9mil is from that source. To give another example of lack of transparency, apart from the names and salaries of a few top earners that appear in its IRS filings mentioned above, SBA does not publish a complete list of the titles and salaries of its employees, not even to its members--let alone to the public whose protection, SBA proclaims, is SBA's mission. Another example of deliberate obfuscation is SBA's use of paid consultants; for instance, SBA uses the services of multiple lobbyists to discourage state and federal authorities from examining dubious and criminal activities on its part; SBA does not disclose its lobbyists' identities or compensation, not even on its federal income tax filings. (Their identities, at least, are, public record, available on a lobbyist website operated as a public service by The Arizona Capitol Times.)
AZAACPR calls on the Arizona Supreme Court to make public its annual budget and funding sources and particularly, for the years beginning with 2000, to disclose the dollar amount of its annual funding derived from SBA's attorney discipline activities.
The State Bar of Arizona is more than transparent, though, about disclosing its unfavorable opinions of individual members. SBA reports publicly, and exhaustively, on disciplinary actions it undertakes with respect to members. It even publicizes the home addresses of members it has disbarred, by openly displaying that information on online sources--for no conceivable public-protection purpose. Also, using online sources, SBA, in violation of the Arizona Constitution (as well as any standard of decency), and in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, discloses reports made by its (medically untrained) Staff Bar Counsel to the Arizona Supreme Court recommending that this or that member (whose name is always publicized) be ordered into "treatment" for purported "mental illness." (See this webpage, [3] below.) These illegal and unfounded determinations, and the rubber-stamp orders mandating "treatment" that ensue from the Arizona Supreme Court, are public record that anyone can access online. SBA receives no taxpayer funding. Staff Bar Counsel and other SBA employees make their living exclusively through the contributions of SBA members...that is, Arizona lawyers. Accordingly, AZAACPR reciprocates by reporting through this website on questionable and unethical conduct by SBA employees, including Staff Bar Counsel and the Presiding Disciplinary Judge.
The Goldwater Institute is a private entity in Phoenix which studies and litigates on constitutional issues affecting public policy. In the autumn, 2015, legislative public sessions alluded to several paragraphs above, a Goldwater Institute staffperson participated as a member of the Study Committee, and there were several presentations by Goldwater Institute staff lawyers. On January 6, 2016, the Arizona Governor announced the appointment to the Arizona Supreme Court of a Goldwater Institute official, lawyer Clint Bolick. As a Supreme Court Justice, Bolick replaces a previous corrupt justice, now-retired Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch. (See this website, page header Inquisitional Discipline [2] [discussion of the probate court scandal; Berch directed the endeavor to cover up who was accountable] and [3] [a] [C] [i].) This appointment may not portend any future redressal of SBA abuses against Arizona attorneys. To date, the Goldwater Institute, although publicly avowing interest in constitutional issues, has shown no interest in abuses of the constitutional rights of attorneys due to corrupt lawyer discipline, whether by Arizona's bar or any other bar organization.
Pending Arizona bill HB 2221 (which is discussed above) has, in part, been drafted and sponsored by the Goldwater Institute. it eliminates mandatory lawyer membership in SBA, but contains no language enjoining SBA from disciplining lawyers and no language enjoining SBA from engaging in corrupt discipline per se. Thus on the surface, it does not achieve all the objectives that would be desirable from the standpoint of the interests of ordinary working lawyers. However, HB 2221 or a successor bill, if passed, may make SBA misuse of discipline less likely, because it will eliminate the source of funding (all SBA funding comes from impositions on members) for corrupt SBA officials, including Staff Bar Counsel, to carry on their depredations--that is, the officials who heretofore have been responsible for the disciplinary abuses. Prominent examples are General Counsel John Furlong, Senior Staff Bar Counsel Craig Henley, kangaroo disciplinary judge William J. O'Neil, and CEO John Phelps, among others. It can be hoped that if HB 2221 passes, all these overcompensated monsters go.
(3) Arizona Supreme Court's Role in Attorney Admissions and Discipline
When seeking admission to the State Bar of Arizona, applicants apply through SBA. The bulk of the scrutiny of applicants takes place, however, in the offices of the Arizona Supreme Court.
SBA membership is conditioned on a showing of the applicant's requisite legal knowledge (usually demonstrated by passing the Bar exam, administered by the Admissions Unit of the Certification and Licensing Committee of the Arizona Supreme Court), and on passing screening by a committee, called the Committee on Character and Fitness, also constituted by the Arizona Supreme Court.
The CCF can recommend that an applicant satisfy special conditions to be admitted. CCF's recommendations are passed on to the SBA, and SBA generates a form of order for conditional Bar admission. The Arizona Supreme Court generally approves the order upon the briefest of deliberations by the Justices, in rubber-stamp fashion.
Conditional admission to the Arizona Bar may entail a requirement to submit to forced mental treatment.
Such an illegal and unconstitutional prerequisite to practicing law is administered by an SBA office euphemistically called the "Member Assistance Program." MAP oversees and monitors compliance with orders of forced mental treatment signed by the Arizona Supreme Court's Justices and by SBA's Presiding Disciplinary Judge. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program.")
For years, the State Bar of Arizona has illicitly operated as a healthcare provider by employing a licensed mental health "therapist" to whom, as a condition of maintaining a law license, it has obliged Bar members and applicants to direct themselves for "evaluation" and/or "treatment." This "therapist," the Director of SBA's so-called "Member Assistance Program," is an ex-convict with a checkered history. Attorneys and Bar applicants have been disbarred or refused admission for resisting, and attorneys have been disbarred for reporting him for sexual assault. See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program"; and see page header Inquisitional Discipline, [2].
Moreover, AZAACPR has received reports that, aside from members and applicants, SBA has also required non-attorney spouses to undergo mental illness evaluation and/or treatment as a condition of the attorney's membership. According to these reports, SBA's "Member Assistance Program" Director, Howard "Hal" Murray Nevitt, has not only comported himself inappropriately with Bar members and applicants for membership, but has also attempted to break up their marriages. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program", [1]).) SBA has also sanctioned and punished victim-attorneys who have complained about this and other MAP abuses.
AZAACPR has notified two successive SBA Presidents (Ed Novak and Amelia Craig Cramer) about the organization's disciplinary excesses and, as of November, 2013, neither, to AZAACPR's knowledge, has taken remedial action to address member and applicant abuse. SBA's misuse of "mental health treatment" as a pretext for conditional admission (imposing special conditions not imposed on other applicants as a prerequisite to Bar membership, such as being required to submit to official questioning about one's sexual history) is ongoing as of autumn, 2014, despite the US Department of Justice's recent issuance of a warning letter to another state bar, identifying such conditional admissions as a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (See http://www.bazelon.org/News-Publications/Press-Releases/2-10-14-LA-State-Bar.aspx.) (See also this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [6].)
(4) How SBA Creates Corruption in Other Arizona Government Agencies
One example of SBA corruption leading to misconduct by a different Arizona licensing body concerns recent complaints to the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners (AzBBHE) against the Director of MAP. MAP is the SBA program responsible for imposing mental illness treatment on attorney-victims. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program.") In 2011, upon the filing of a complaint with AzBBHE against the Director for alleged sexual assault and battery, SBA was informed; and it may have provided the Director with the wherewithal for his defense. AzBBHE never officially charged the Director over the sexual assault and battery allegation (although he was sanctioned for other professional misconduct). (See id., [1], [7].) SBA may have brought influence to bear on AzBBHE to shield the Director from the charge of sexual assault. Despite his sanctioning by AzBBHE, SBA failed to relieve the state's Bar of that individual but rather, retained him as MAP Director. The failure of AzBBHE to officially charge the Director with sexual misconduct is one example illustrating how SBA corruption may induce corruption in other Arizona government agencies. (See also id., [6].) It may also be noted that AzBBHE has put itself in a conflicted position by permitting the individual who has been serving SBA as MAP Director (Howard "Hal" Murray Nevitt) to be a consultant on disciplinary cases involving other licensees of AzBBHE, despite the fact that he too is an AzBBHE licensee, and by considering his reports in its deliberations on such cases, even though he too has come under disciplinary scrutiny by AzBBHE, having himself been the subject of complaints. See, e.g., p. 4, paragraph 11, in
http://www.healthgrades.com/media/english/pdf/sanctions/
HGPY2F9B2E5F773845E5B05022008.pdf.
Another example is the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool (ACIP). ACIP, located in Phoenix, is a governmental agency that administers a self-insurance program for Arizona Counties to forestall the high costs of defending lawsuits. (See http://www.aciponline.org.) In 2008, an individual, an SBA member, brought suit in pro per against Santa Cruz County, Arizona (Santa Cruz County Superior Court Case no. 08-630). ACIP furnished the County with a defense lawyer, Georgia A. Staton, Bar Member no. 004863, who is a partner in the Phoenix law firm Jones, Skelton & Hochuli, PLC. When Staton prevailed on summary judgment, the plaintiff noticed appeal. Thereupon, an ACIP senior Case Manager, Cindy Byrne, lodged a discipinary complaint against the plaintiff-lawyer. The wording of the complaint made clear that Staton, representing the County, had asked Byrne to complain to SBA and that the purpose of the complaint was to pressure the plaintiff into calling off the appeal. Byrne's asking SBA to intervene in the litigation was clearly corrupt, as was Staton's act in inducing Byrne to complain. That did not stop SBA from proceeding against the attorney-victim while the case was on appeal, even though by the time of hearing, Byrne no longer worked for ACIP. Staff Bar Counsel was unable to produce Byrne, the complainant, in the disciplinary hearing. (See this website, page header Inquisitional Discipline, [3] (c) (i) (II).)
ACIP has no official business to intervene in litigation for which it provides a County with defense counsel. Very likely, ACIP removed Byrne from its employ because it was aware that in lodging a Bar complaint, Byrne had involved it in a conflict of interest. ACIP's action, through rogue employee Byrne, was a violation of the Arizona Constitution, Article 18, sec. 6, guaranteeing the right of a plaintiff to sue in negligence. SBA, by acting as an accomplice to Staton, one of its pet lawyers (see id.), in attempting to manipulate process extra-judicially to coerce the opposition to drop its appeal, likewise violated the constitutional right to sue in negligence. The involvement of ACIP in a Bar complaint illustrates, again, how SBA corruption spawns corruption in other Arizona government bodies.
Another agency which has been brought into a conflict of interest by involvement with SBA corruption is the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
Concerning a recently-exposed conflict in which Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne intervened in the disciplinary matter of a suspended woman lawyer (reportedly, he intervened order to hire her, his paramour, as an Assistant Attorney General), see this website, page header Inquisitional Discipline, [3] [a] [C]. The state's Supreme Court was also conflicted in this scandal because, in issuing orders for the paramour's reinstatement to the practice of law, the Court violated its own Rules (the Rules of the Supreme Court of Arizona). See id.
In another matter involving the AAG, on March 31, 2003, Arizona Assistant Attorney General Marc H. Harris addressed a letter "as the Health Unit Chief for the Licensing and Enforcement Section of the Office of the Attorney General" to Joe Chornenky, the Phoenix area lawyer then representing ex-convict Howard "Hal" Murray Nevitt. Chornenky was litigating Nevitt's action in Maricopa County Superior Court, CR-0000-156528, to have civil rights restored after serving felony time. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [1]; [8].) Harris wrote in Nevitt's support. Harris' letter was attached as an Exhibit to an August 5, 2003, Application to Set Aside Judgment of Guilt, Dismiss Charges, Restore Civil Rights and Restore Right to Possess Weapons, filed by lawyer Chornenky. Today, after becoming a "master's-level therapist," Nevitt is the Director of SBA's so-called "Member Assistance Program" (MAP); while Marc H. Harris is the Arizona Attorney General's representative on the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners. That Board has been receiving and evaluating the public's complaints against its licensee Nevitt since several years after Nevitt became SBA's MAP Director in 2004. Harris and Nevitt clearly have been mutual admirers since at least 2003. The fact that Harris has not recused himself but, by representing the State at Board meetings, continues to play a role in determining the outcome of AzBBHE disciplinary investigations of Nevitt, shows that the AAG's office, too, is conflicted and corrupted by entanglement with activities and staff of SBA. (See id., [7].)
It was noted above that the state Supreme Court is implicated in the Tom Horne scandal. The Supreme Court of Arizona is also guilty of civil offenses under Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S.) sec. 39-129.02, and in fact of actionable offenses under part (C) of that statute, arising from the fact that the Supreme Court is one of the governmental bodies that is covered by the Arizona Public Records Law. There is a Committee on Character and Fitness (which is a Supreme Court body, not part of the Bar) which scrutinizes a part of every Arizona Bar membership application called the "Character and Fitness" application. See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [5] [b]. The Committee has been failing to respond to written requests for records from Bar applicants. See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [10] [i]. The law in question, which the Committee has disregarded, states: "Any person who is wrongfully denied access to public records pursuant to this article has a cause of action against the officer or public body resulting from the denial." AZAACPR invites correspondence from Bar members or applicants who may be interested in participating in a class action against the Supreme Court of Arizona for wrongs stemming from the denial of access to records acquired or created by the Committee on Character and Fitness.
(5) SBA Abuses of Prosecution Not Limited to Arizona Attorneys
Attorneys licensed in jurisdictions other than Arizona beware: The State Bar of Arizona and its sponsor, the Supreme Court of Arizona, have arrogated to themselves a privilege, entirely unwarranted, to discipline attorneys licensed in jurisdictions other than Arizona--including attorneys who don't even practice in a court that comes under the purview of the Arizona Judicial Department.
AZAACPR has learned of the instance of an attorney (herein to be called Attorney Noble, because the attorney is serving in the US military). Attorney Noble has been licensed by the federal government to practice in federal courts. The attorney is also licensed in a state B, but has never been licensed in Arizona. Attorney Noble has also been a JAG in the US military. A dissatisfied former client, who happens to reside in Arizona, sent a letter to the State Bar of Arizona complaining about the outcome of an immigration matter that Attorney Noble had handled. The complaint was unjustified, but the SBA seized on it to confabulate a series of false allegations against Attorney Noble.
However, what is principally at issue here is not the soundness of the allegations, but the fact that the Arizona Bar presumed at all to discipline a non-Arizona lawyer. The issue is the Arizona Bar using the circumstances as a pretext to exceed its lawful authority, which is limited to regulating the bar in Arizona courts. The State of Arizona did not have jurisdiction to discipline this attorney because the attorney was not licensed in Arizona. Moreover, to practice in federal courts, all that is required is membership in any state bar (even if it is not the bar of the same state in which one operates one's practice) and admission to the federal bar. Attorney Noble had the right to practice immigration law in federal courts in Arizona without being subject to the jurisdiction of Arizona judicial authorities because these standards were satisfied.
A responsible state bar organization might have decided to pass on what information it had about the attorney to the agencies of the federal government responsible for licensing the attorney, and to the bar authority in State B. Instead, at the cost of its own members' impositions, the State Bar of Arizona, in a bizarre show of megalomania and excess, convened a complete formal hearing (which the respondent was unable to attend because of the obligations of military service; the Bar likewise struck a response to the complaint filed by the respondent on grounds of lateness--the respondent did not timely receive the complaint, again, because of the obligations of military service). As an outcome of the formal hearing, the Bar pretended to "sanction" attorney Noble with monetary charges--charges which the Bar and its disciplinary apparatus (presided over by Presiding Disciplinary Judge William J. O'Neil) have no authority to impose, and which the Arizona Supreme Court would have no lawful means of enforcing. And once that occurred, in a colossal act of gall, defamation and deception, SBA reported to the State B and federal authorities that it had "sanctioned" attorney Noble. As a result, Attorney Noble now faces reciprocal discipline in State B as well as involuntary separation from the military and loss of military retirement benefits.
The SBA Staff Bar Counsel who instigated charges in this matter is named Stacy L. Shuman. This individual should be sanctioned, dismissed from SBA's employ, and disbarred. Judge William J. O'Neil, for willingly participating in an abuse of prosecution, should be investigated, disbarred and debenched.
PDJ-2013-9077
(6) Why This Website?
To lack a voice is to lack even the means of power, not to speak of power itself. In the Arizona legal arena, the Judiciary holds all the power. Arizona attorneys lack a voice.
The natural antagonism between judges and lawyers is a fact of life and an old story. In Arizona, the Supreme Court of the State advocates for its own interests, which is to say, the interests of judges. The Arizona Supreme Court maintains a show tribunal, the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Its composition is judges; in addition, there are a few attorney-members, appointed by--surprise! SBA--and "public members," selected by the state Governor; all of whom can be counted on as favorable to the Judiciary. Unless one judge does something that offends other judges, the Committee takes no action to discipline judges.
The Arizona Supreme Court and its satellite, the State Bar of Arizona (SBA), do not represent the interests nor attend to the opinions of lawyers or the public. Where the interests of the public are concerned, that leaves the Fourth Estate. The Arizona press, including the Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star, place themselves that the service of SBA by publishing its announcements. They publish its press releases. These include announcements of attorney sanctions. In publishing press releases announcing such sanctions, the press publicizes SBA's side of the matter, which always impugns the integrity and reputation of the lawyer. By and large, when attorneys request a right of response, the press does not publish attorney responses. The press likewise does not express lawyers' perceptions of attorney discipline and other SBA practices.
AZAACPR has learned that as of autumn, 2013, the Arizona Republic, the state's leading print newspaper, although aware of concerns, has been sitting on at least two successive investigations of SBA corruption for over a year.
In general, because rank and file attorneys lack a voice, the public goes uninformed about the Judiciary's abuses, the Courts' negligence, and the vicious misconduct of the Supreme Court of Arizona's satellite agency, SBA. Where the privileges of the Judiciary are concerned, it appears the Arizona press will not be caught committing an act of responsible journalism.
SBA and its sponsor, the Judiciary, do nothing to address, let alone advance, the interests and viewpoints of Arizona attorneys. This is the impetus for AZAACPR and the reason for this website.
(c) 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Arizona Attorneys Against Corrupt Professional Regulation and The Bartus Trust
2. SBA and the Arizona Supreme Court
3. Arizona Supreme Court's Role in Attorney Admissions and Discipline
4. How SBA Creates Corruption in Other Arizona Government Agencies
5. SBA Abuses of Prosecution Not Limited to Arizona Attorneys
6. Why This Website?
(1) About the State Bar of Arizona: Establishment of SBA
By Rules of the Arizona Supreme Court, the State Bar of Arizona is created as a subentity of the Arizona Supreme Court and as a not-for-profit corporation. SBA is empowered to sue or be sued, to enter into contracts, to deal in property, and to implement policies of the Arizona Supreme Court. (17A Arizona Revised Statutes [A.R.S.] Rules of the Supreme Court of Arizona, R. 32.) SBA is not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with services to Arizona attorneys. For example, one of its most active roles consists of lobbying the Arizona Legislature.
Lawyers are not exclusively regulated by the judiciary in all states, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon being exceptions.
In the opinion of AZAACPR, the Arizona Supreme Court has evinced an incapacity to regulate Arizona lawyers without abusing standards of fairness and the dignity and rights of individuals engaged in the practice of law. AZAACPR takes the position that, because SBA has manifested an incapacity to avoid harms to the legal profession and to the public, the Arizona Bar would better be operated by the Arizona Legislature.
AZAACPR calls upon the Arizona Legislature to pass legislation separating the State Bar of Arizona from the Arizona Courts and Judiciary.
In January, 2016, led by Chief Sponsor Rep. Anthony Kern, two bills were introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives, both with the intent of abolishing mandatory membership in SBA as a precondition for practicing law in Arizona and with returning key functions now handled by SBA to the government (the Supreme Court of Arizona). These are HB 2219 and 2221. Interested readers may peruse www.icarizona.com/2016/01/two-bills-introduced-in-arizona.state.html. In February, although HB 2219 did not pass the House, HB 2221 did pass the House. On March 9, 2016, the Arizona Senate's Government Committee passed HB 2221. On March 28, 2016, HB 2221 was approved by the Senate Committee of the Whole. On May 5, 2016, however, HB 2221 did not survive final vote in the Senate. The endeavor to impose sensible restrictions on SBA may resume in the fall of 2016. News about future efforts, any other committee meetings, and other events and information are likely to be posted on a website workingforabetterbar.org.
In the meantime, underscoring why the effort must go on, SBA famously initiated reprisals against members who publicly expressed support for the objectives of the House of Representatives Study Committee (see [2] below) whose work culminated in HB 2219 and HB 2221. At the Arizona Senate Government Committee meeting on March 9, 2016, a member who twice commented in public comments portions of Study Committee sessions, Karyl Krug, announced that SBA had put a target on her back: ten days after she made a second public comment, SBA sent her a lengthy document - it was addressed to the Arizona Supreme Court, it charged Krug with professional misconduct, and it included a written directive addressed to Krug. The directive outlined no specific allegations but it demanded her response. Krug's statement is recorded in the legislature's video of the proceeding. See http://azleg.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=26&clip_id=17236 at 02:27:40 to 02:28:20. Also in the public comments portion of the same video, a member, Mr. Stutsman, reports that for repeatedly complaining in writing about increasing Bar dues, he received a written notice from SBA CEO John Phelps threatening disciplinary action.
Arizona-licensed attorneys who belong to the Federal Bar and who may be willing to undertake litigation against SBA and against certain of its and of the Arizona Supreme Court's officials involved in misuse of discipline against SBA members, especially if HB 2221 passes and membership in SBA becomes non-mandatory, are asked to contact this website.
(2) SBA and the Arizona Supreme Court
The Arizona Supreme Court does not disclose how much money it collects for its operations from SBA impositions on lawyers.
John Phelps, CEO and Executive Director of the State Bar of Arizona, has stated publicly that no public money is used for SBA operations, and that in particular, its disciplinary apparatus is funded exclusively from impositions on SBA members.
See http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/07/13/20120713state-bar-regulatory-agency-phelps.html.
A summary budget published by the SBA states that in 2010, SBA had annual "support and revenues" of some $14.6 million. This figure does not separate out mandatory member contributions from donations by interested parties. The 2010 budget does show that over $174,000 of "support and revenues" derived from "Lawyer Regulation" and around $55,000 from payments to the so-called "Member Assistance Program" (MAP). In 2011, the MAP figure was nearly the same but the revenue from "Lawyer Regulation" had increased to almost $205,000. (See State Bar of Arizona Independent Auditor's Report and Financial Statements, p. 3 ["Statements of Activities for the Years Ended December 31, 2011 and 2010"] at http://www.azbar.org/media/418951/state_bar_of_arizona_iar___fs_2011_client_copy.pdf; and, for further updates, see http://www.azbar.org/aboutus/leadership/boardofgovernors/importantissues/
proposedduesincrease/financialstatementsandaudits.)
SBA's 2009 net assets were in excess of $6.5 million. This is related to the fact that, for many years, the Arizona Bar has demanded nearly the highest member impositions (dues augmented by other required payments) of any state bar in the USA. (See Joey A. Flynn, "From the President's Desk," The Writ [publication of the Pima County Bar Association, Tucson, Arizona], p. 3, July, 2009.) And the Bar's appetite for members' money is not on the wane; as of 2015, for active Arizona Bar members in practice at least three years, the Arizona Supreme Court, in an Administrative Order No. 2014-32, has decreed that there will be a $15/year dues increase for that year and each of the three successive years. (See https://www.azcourts.gov/Portals/22/admorder/Orders14/2014-32.pdf.)
SBA employs numerous Staff Bar Counsel. In May, 2011, the number of lawyers employed was twenty. (See www.azbar.org "Find an Attorney" search function.) By comparison, in 2012 the number of bar counsel employed by the State Bar of New Mexico was seven. (See www.nmbar.org "Find an Attorney" search function.)
Neither the SBA nor the Arizona Supreme Court has publicly explained how or why Arizona attorneys, compared with their colleagues in an adjacent state, require nearly three times more supervising Staff Bar Counsel to exercise disciplinary oversight.
By standards of attorney salaries offered by other Arizona employers, SBA Staff Bar Counsel is a generously compensated position. In 2011, newly hired SBA Staff Bar Counsel started at about $80,000 per year. (See www.azbar.org Career Center listings.) SBA publicly discloses its annual IRS income tax filings. (See www.azbar.org/aboutus/financialstatements/ and click on links for Forms 990 at the lower left on the webpage.) For tax year 2013, SBA has reported the annual compensation of some (not all) of its leading salaried officials, including a salary for CEO John F. Phelps at $180,412; for Deputy CEO and General Counsel John A. Furlong, $138,519; for Chief Bar Counsel Maret Vessella, $136,313; for Amy Rehm, Deputy Chief Bar Counsel, $126,150; for Patricia Sallen, so-called "Director of Special Services," $111,739; for Elizabeth H. Deane, Chief Member Services Officer, $118,909; for Lisa Fontes, Advertising Services Manager, $118,192. Each of these figures exceeds the salary of the Governor of Arizona. SBA's reported total for official compensation and other salaries and wages approaches seven million dollars annually.
In the autumn of 2015, the Arizona House of Representatives, led by Rep. Anthony Kern, convened a series of public sessions at the capitol in Phoenix about the mandatory obligation of Arizona lawyers to join the state bar organization (Arizona House of Representatives Ad Hoc Study Committee on Mandatory Bar Associations). Videos of the four sessions may be accessed at http://azleg.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=22. (Also, a summary of the October 19, 2015, Study Committee session is available at www.icarizona.com/2015/10/az-bar-ceo-arrogantly-ridicules.html.) SBA's CEO John F. Phelps stated at one of the public sessions on October 26, 2015, that SBA has 98 salaried employees. At another session, on December 7, 2015, attorney and former SBA "member of the year" (i.e., SBA insider) Denise Blommel stated that for government to replace the disciplinary counsel ("Staff Bar Counsel") of SBA with employees of the state Supreme Court, it would be necessary to fill forty positions and the annual taxpayer cost would be $8 million dollars. It is questionable whether any other bar organization in the USA employs as many as even half this number of overpaid lawyers to keep the rest of its members in line.
Shockingly, SBA CEO John Phelps has publicly admitted that it is even worse than that. At the March 9, 2016, Senate Government Committee meeting alluded to above (see [1] para 6), Phelps (who has at other sessions before the House of Representative admitted that SBA has 98 employed staff) admitted that not forty, but forty-five of these staff are engaged in attorney discipline - that is, nearly half of SBA's workforce of employees! No other lawyer disciplinary body in the USA engages such a ridiculously oversized workforce to discipline its states' lawyers.
The bloated and overcompensated Staff Bar Counsel cabal naturally must justify its existence and income, and does so largely by imposing "discipline" on fellow attorney SBA members, much of which is frivolously grounded.
AZAACPR has been unable to determine how much funding the Court receives annually from SBA. As to SBA, annually it puts up a slate of persons it permits to run in a sham election for a seat on its voluntary "Board of Governors." To get on the slate, it is virtually mandatory that one belong to one of several mega-sized private Phoenix law firms--small-firm and solo practice lawyers are excluded from participating or having a say in SBA policies or operations. SBA officials and the SBA-selected cabal of fat-cat big-firm lawyers on the BOG run the show. SBA is notoriously opposed to transparency when it comes to SBA's own operations; it yields up to the public only scanty and incomplete information about how much money it spends on what purposes; and won't say how much money members pay to support how many employees involved in lawyer discipline, nor what those employees' (including the Presiding Disciplinary Judge's) current salaries are. SBA publicly gives the rationale that since it is a private corporation, it is immune from open meetings and public records laws. To give one example of the lack of transparency, at the October 19, 2015, Study Committee session of the House of Representatives alluded to above, SBA CEO John Phelps stated that currently, SBA had 98 employees and that the 2015 SBA total budget is $15.1 million and that this comes from the following sources: member dues $9.2mil, Continuing Legal Education sales $1.9mil, and "other income" $3.9 mil. (These comments appear about 20 minutes into the videotape of the Study Committee session, which can be viewed online at the Arizona Legislature website address cited above.) It is anybody's guess how much of the "other income" comes from impositions against lawyers for discipline. But it can be reasonably surmised that all or nearly all of the $3.9mil is from that source. To give another example of lack of transparency, apart from the names and salaries of a few top earners that appear in its IRS filings mentioned above, SBA does not publish a complete list of the titles and salaries of its employees, not even to its members--let alone to the public whose protection, SBA proclaims, is SBA's mission. Another example of deliberate obfuscation is SBA's use of paid consultants; for instance, SBA uses the services of multiple lobbyists to discourage state and federal authorities from examining dubious and criminal activities on its part; SBA does not disclose its lobbyists' identities or compensation, not even on its federal income tax filings. (Their identities, at least, are, public record, available on a lobbyist website operated as a public service by The Arizona Capitol Times.)
AZAACPR calls on the Arizona Supreme Court to make public its annual budget and funding sources and particularly, for the years beginning with 2000, to disclose the dollar amount of its annual funding derived from SBA's attorney discipline activities.
The State Bar of Arizona is more than transparent, though, about disclosing its unfavorable opinions of individual members. SBA reports publicly, and exhaustively, on disciplinary actions it undertakes with respect to members. It even publicizes the home addresses of members it has disbarred, by openly displaying that information on online sources--for no conceivable public-protection purpose. Also, using online sources, SBA, in violation of the Arizona Constitution (as well as any standard of decency), and in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, discloses reports made by its (medically untrained) Staff Bar Counsel to the Arizona Supreme Court recommending that this or that member (whose name is always publicized) be ordered into "treatment" for purported "mental illness." (See this webpage, [3] below.) These illegal and unfounded determinations, and the rubber-stamp orders mandating "treatment" that ensue from the Arizona Supreme Court, are public record that anyone can access online. SBA receives no taxpayer funding. Staff Bar Counsel and other SBA employees make their living exclusively through the contributions of SBA members...that is, Arizona lawyers. Accordingly, AZAACPR reciprocates by reporting through this website on questionable and unethical conduct by SBA employees, including Staff Bar Counsel and the Presiding Disciplinary Judge.
The Goldwater Institute is a private entity in Phoenix which studies and litigates on constitutional issues affecting public policy. In the autumn, 2015, legislative public sessions alluded to several paragraphs above, a Goldwater Institute staffperson participated as a member of the Study Committee, and there were several presentations by Goldwater Institute staff lawyers. On January 6, 2016, the Arizona Governor announced the appointment to the Arizona Supreme Court of a Goldwater Institute official, lawyer Clint Bolick. As a Supreme Court Justice, Bolick replaces a previous corrupt justice, now-retired Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch. (See this website, page header Inquisitional Discipline [2] [discussion of the probate court scandal; Berch directed the endeavor to cover up who was accountable] and [3] [a] [C] [i].) This appointment may not portend any future redressal of SBA abuses against Arizona attorneys. To date, the Goldwater Institute, although publicly avowing interest in constitutional issues, has shown no interest in abuses of the constitutional rights of attorneys due to corrupt lawyer discipline, whether by Arizona's bar or any other bar organization.
Pending Arizona bill HB 2221 (which is discussed above) has, in part, been drafted and sponsored by the Goldwater Institute. it eliminates mandatory lawyer membership in SBA, but contains no language enjoining SBA from disciplining lawyers and no language enjoining SBA from engaging in corrupt discipline per se. Thus on the surface, it does not achieve all the objectives that would be desirable from the standpoint of the interests of ordinary working lawyers. However, HB 2221 or a successor bill, if passed, may make SBA misuse of discipline less likely, because it will eliminate the source of funding (all SBA funding comes from impositions on members) for corrupt SBA officials, including Staff Bar Counsel, to carry on their depredations--that is, the officials who heretofore have been responsible for the disciplinary abuses. Prominent examples are General Counsel John Furlong, Senior Staff Bar Counsel Craig Henley, kangaroo disciplinary judge William J. O'Neil, and CEO John Phelps, among others. It can be hoped that if HB 2221 passes, all these overcompensated monsters go.
(3) Arizona Supreme Court's Role in Attorney Admissions and Discipline
When seeking admission to the State Bar of Arizona, applicants apply through SBA. The bulk of the scrutiny of applicants takes place, however, in the offices of the Arizona Supreme Court.
SBA membership is conditioned on a showing of the applicant's requisite legal knowledge (usually demonstrated by passing the Bar exam, administered by the Admissions Unit of the Certification and Licensing Committee of the Arizona Supreme Court), and on passing screening by a committee, called the Committee on Character and Fitness, also constituted by the Arizona Supreme Court.
The CCF can recommend that an applicant satisfy special conditions to be admitted. CCF's recommendations are passed on to the SBA, and SBA generates a form of order for conditional Bar admission. The Arizona Supreme Court generally approves the order upon the briefest of deliberations by the Justices, in rubber-stamp fashion.
Conditional admission to the Arizona Bar may entail a requirement to submit to forced mental treatment.
Such an illegal and unconstitutional prerequisite to practicing law is administered by an SBA office euphemistically called the "Member Assistance Program." MAP oversees and monitors compliance with orders of forced mental treatment signed by the Arizona Supreme Court's Justices and by SBA's Presiding Disciplinary Judge. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program.")
For years, the State Bar of Arizona has illicitly operated as a healthcare provider by employing a licensed mental health "therapist" to whom, as a condition of maintaining a law license, it has obliged Bar members and applicants to direct themselves for "evaluation" and/or "treatment." This "therapist," the Director of SBA's so-called "Member Assistance Program," is an ex-convict with a checkered history. Attorneys and Bar applicants have been disbarred or refused admission for resisting, and attorneys have been disbarred for reporting him for sexual assault. See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program"; and see page header Inquisitional Discipline, [2].
Moreover, AZAACPR has received reports that, aside from members and applicants, SBA has also required non-attorney spouses to undergo mental illness evaluation and/or treatment as a condition of the attorney's membership. According to these reports, SBA's "Member Assistance Program" Director, Howard "Hal" Murray Nevitt, has not only comported himself inappropriately with Bar members and applicants for membership, but has also attempted to break up their marriages. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program", [1]).) SBA has also sanctioned and punished victim-attorneys who have complained about this and other MAP abuses.
AZAACPR has notified two successive SBA Presidents (Ed Novak and Amelia Craig Cramer) about the organization's disciplinary excesses and, as of November, 2013, neither, to AZAACPR's knowledge, has taken remedial action to address member and applicant abuse. SBA's misuse of "mental health treatment" as a pretext for conditional admission (imposing special conditions not imposed on other applicants as a prerequisite to Bar membership, such as being required to submit to official questioning about one's sexual history) is ongoing as of autumn, 2014, despite the US Department of Justice's recent issuance of a warning letter to another state bar, identifying such conditional admissions as a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (See http://www.bazelon.org/News-Publications/Press-Releases/2-10-14-LA-State-Bar.aspx.) (See also this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [6].)
(4) How SBA Creates Corruption in Other Arizona Government Agencies
One example of SBA corruption leading to misconduct by a different Arizona licensing body concerns recent complaints to the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners (AzBBHE) against the Director of MAP. MAP is the SBA program responsible for imposing mental illness treatment on attorney-victims. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program.") In 2011, upon the filing of a complaint with AzBBHE against the Director for alleged sexual assault and battery, SBA was informed; and it may have provided the Director with the wherewithal for his defense. AzBBHE never officially charged the Director over the sexual assault and battery allegation (although he was sanctioned for other professional misconduct). (See id., [1], [7].) SBA may have brought influence to bear on AzBBHE to shield the Director from the charge of sexual assault. Despite his sanctioning by AzBBHE, SBA failed to relieve the state's Bar of that individual but rather, retained him as MAP Director. The failure of AzBBHE to officially charge the Director with sexual misconduct is one example illustrating how SBA corruption may induce corruption in other Arizona government agencies. (See also id., [6].) It may also be noted that AzBBHE has put itself in a conflicted position by permitting the individual who has been serving SBA as MAP Director (Howard "Hal" Murray Nevitt) to be a consultant on disciplinary cases involving other licensees of AzBBHE, despite the fact that he too is an AzBBHE licensee, and by considering his reports in its deliberations on such cases, even though he too has come under disciplinary scrutiny by AzBBHE, having himself been the subject of complaints. See, e.g., p. 4, paragraph 11, in
http://www.healthgrades.com/media/english/pdf/sanctions/
HGPY2F9B2E5F773845E5B05022008.pdf.
Another example is the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool (ACIP). ACIP, located in Phoenix, is a governmental agency that administers a self-insurance program for Arizona Counties to forestall the high costs of defending lawsuits. (See http://www.aciponline.org.) In 2008, an individual, an SBA member, brought suit in pro per against Santa Cruz County, Arizona (Santa Cruz County Superior Court Case no. 08-630). ACIP furnished the County with a defense lawyer, Georgia A. Staton, Bar Member no. 004863, who is a partner in the Phoenix law firm Jones, Skelton & Hochuli, PLC. When Staton prevailed on summary judgment, the plaintiff noticed appeal. Thereupon, an ACIP senior Case Manager, Cindy Byrne, lodged a discipinary complaint against the plaintiff-lawyer. The wording of the complaint made clear that Staton, representing the County, had asked Byrne to complain to SBA and that the purpose of the complaint was to pressure the plaintiff into calling off the appeal. Byrne's asking SBA to intervene in the litigation was clearly corrupt, as was Staton's act in inducing Byrne to complain. That did not stop SBA from proceeding against the attorney-victim while the case was on appeal, even though by the time of hearing, Byrne no longer worked for ACIP. Staff Bar Counsel was unable to produce Byrne, the complainant, in the disciplinary hearing. (See this website, page header Inquisitional Discipline, [3] (c) (i) (II).)
ACIP has no official business to intervene in litigation for which it provides a County with defense counsel. Very likely, ACIP removed Byrne from its employ because it was aware that in lodging a Bar complaint, Byrne had involved it in a conflict of interest. ACIP's action, through rogue employee Byrne, was a violation of the Arizona Constitution, Article 18, sec. 6, guaranteeing the right of a plaintiff to sue in negligence. SBA, by acting as an accomplice to Staton, one of its pet lawyers (see id.), in attempting to manipulate process extra-judicially to coerce the opposition to drop its appeal, likewise violated the constitutional right to sue in negligence. The involvement of ACIP in a Bar complaint illustrates, again, how SBA corruption spawns corruption in other Arizona government bodies.
Another agency which has been brought into a conflict of interest by involvement with SBA corruption is the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
Concerning a recently-exposed conflict in which Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne intervened in the disciplinary matter of a suspended woman lawyer (reportedly, he intervened order to hire her, his paramour, as an Assistant Attorney General), see this website, page header Inquisitional Discipline, [3] [a] [C]. The state's Supreme Court was also conflicted in this scandal because, in issuing orders for the paramour's reinstatement to the practice of law, the Court violated its own Rules (the Rules of the Supreme Court of Arizona). See id.
In another matter involving the AAG, on March 31, 2003, Arizona Assistant Attorney General Marc H. Harris addressed a letter "as the Health Unit Chief for the Licensing and Enforcement Section of the Office of the Attorney General" to Joe Chornenky, the Phoenix area lawyer then representing ex-convict Howard "Hal" Murray Nevitt. Chornenky was litigating Nevitt's action in Maricopa County Superior Court, CR-0000-156528, to have civil rights restored after serving felony time. (See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [1]; [8].) Harris wrote in Nevitt's support. Harris' letter was attached as an Exhibit to an August 5, 2003, Application to Set Aside Judgment of Guilt, Dismiss Charges, Restore Civil Rights and Restore Right to Possess Weapons, filed by lawyer Chornenky. Today, after becoming a "master's-level therapist," Nevitt is the Director of SBA's so-called "Member Assistance Program" (MAP); while Marc H. Harris is the Arizona Attorney General's representative on the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners. That Board has been receiving and evaluating the public's complaints against its licensee Nevitt since several years after Nevitt became SBA's MAP Director in 2004. Harris and Nevitt clearly have been mutual admirers since at least 2003. The fact that Harris has not recused himself but, by representing the State at Board meetings, continues to play a role in determining the outcome of AzBBHE disciplinary investigations of Nevitt, shows that the AAG's office, too, is conflicted and corrupted by entanglement with activities and staff of SBA. (See id., [7].)
It was noted above that the state Supreme Court is implicated in the Tom Horne scandal. The Supreme Court of Arizona is also guilty of civil offenses under Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S.) sec. 39-129.02, and in fact of actionable offenses under part (C) of that statute, arising from the fact that the Supreme Court is one of the governmental bodies that is covered by the Arizona Public Records Law. There is a Committee on Character and Fitness (which is a Supreme Court body, not part of the Bar) which scrutinizes a part of every Arizona Bar membership application called the "Character and Fitness" application. See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [5] [b]. The Committee has been failing to respond to written requests for records from Bar applicants. See this website, page header SBA "Member Assistance Program," [10] [i]. The law in question, which the Committee has disregarded, states: "Any person who is wrongfully denied access to public records pursuant to this article has a cause of action against the officer or public body resulting from the denial." AZAACPR invites correspondence from Bar members or applicants who may be interested in participating in a class action against the Supreme Court of Arizona for wrongs stemming from the denial of access to records acquired or created by the Committee on Character and Fitness.
(5) SBA Abuses of Prosecution Not Limited to Arizona Attorneys
Attorneys licensed in jurisdictions other than Arizona beware: The State Bar of Arizona and its sponsor, the Supreme Court of Arizona, have arrogated to themselves a privilege, entirely unwarranted, to discipline attorneys licensed in jurisdictions other than Arizona--including attorneys who don't even practice in a court that comes under the purview of the Arizona Judicial Department.
AZAACPR has learned of the instance of an attorney (herein to be called Attorney Noble, because the attorney is serving in the US military). Attorney Noble has been licensed by the federal government to practice in federal courts. The attorney is also licensed in a state B, but has never been licensed in Arizona. Attorney Noble has also been a JAG in the US military. A dissatisfied former client, who happens to reside in Arizona, sent a letter to the State Bar of Arizona complaining about the outcome of an immigration matter that Attorney Noble had handled. The complaint was unjustified, but the SBA seized on it to confabulate a series of false allegations against Attorney Noble.
However, what is principally at issue here is not the soundness of the allegations, but the fact that the Arizona Bar presumed at all to discipline a non-Arizona lawyer. The issue is the Arizona Bar using the circumstances as a pretext to exceed its lawful authority, which is limited to regulating the bar in Arizona courts. The State of Arizona did not have jurisdiction to discipline this attorney because the attorney was not licensed in Arizona. Moreover, to practice in federal courts, all that is required is membership in any state bar (even if it is not the bar of the same state in which one operates one's practice) and admission to the federal bar. Attorney Noble had the right to practice immigration law in federal courts in Arizona without being subject to the jurisdiction of Arizona judicial authorities because these standards were satisfied.
A responsible state bar organization might have decided to pass on what information it had about the attorney to the agencies of the federal government responsible for licensing the attorney, and to the bar authority in State B. Instead, at the cost of its own members' impositions, the State Bar of Arizona, in a bizarre show of megalomania and excess, convened a complete formal hearing (which the respondent was unable to attend because of the obligations of military service; the Bar likewise struck a response to the complaint filed by the respondent on grounds of lateness--the respondent did not timely receive the complaint, again, because of the obligations of military service). As an outcome of the formal hearing, the Bar pretended to "sanction" attorney Noble with monetary charges--charges which the Bar and its disciplinary apparatus (presided over by Presiding Disciplinary Judge William J. O'Neil) have no authority to impose, and which the Arizona Supreme Court would have no lawful means of enforcing. And once that occurred, in a colossal act of gall, defamation and deception, SBA reported to the State B and federal authorities that it had "sanctioned" attorney Noble. As a result, Attorney Noble now faces reciprocal discipline in State B as well as involuntary separation from the military and loss of military retirement benefits.
The SBA Staff Bar Counsel who instigated charges in this matter is named Stacy L. Shuman. This individual should be sanctioned, dismissed from SBA's employ, and disbarred. Judge William J. O'Neil, for willingly participating in an abuse of prosecution, should be investigated, disbarred and debenched.
PDJ-2013-9077
(6) Why This Website?
To lack a voice is to lack even the means of power, not to speak of power itself. In the Arizona legal arena, the Judiciary holds all the power. Arizona attorneys lack a voice.
The natural antagonism between judges and lawyers is a fact of life and an old story. In Arizona, the Supreme Court of the State advocates for its own interests, which is to say, the interests of judges. The Arizona Supreme Court maintains a show tribunal, the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Its composition is judges; in addition, there are a few attorney-members, appointed by--surprise! SBA--and "public members," selected by the state Governor; all of whom can be counted on as favorable to the Judiciary. Unless one judge does something that offends other judges, the Committee takes no action to discipline judges.
The Arizona Supreme Court and its satellite, the State Bar of Arizona (SBA), do not represent the interests nor attend to the opinions of lawyers or the public. Where the interests of the public are concerned, that leaves the Fourth Estate. The Arizona press, including the Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star, place themselves that the service of SBA by publishing its announcements. They publish its press releases. These include announcements of attorney sanctions. In publishing press releases announcing such sanctions, the press publicizes SBA's side of the matter, which always impugns the integrity and reputation of the lawyer. By and large, when attorneys request a right of response, the press does not publish attorney responses. The press likewise does not express lawyers' perceptions of attorney discipline and other SBA practices.
AZAACPR has learned that as of autumn, 2013, the Arizona Republic, the state's leading print newspaper, although aware of concerns, has been sitting on at least two successive investigations of SBA corruption for over a year.
In general, because rank and file attorneys lack a voice, the public goes uninformed about the Judiciary's abuses, the Courts' negligence, and the vicious misconduct of the Supreme Court of Arizona's satellite agency, SBA. Where the privileges of the Judiciary are concerned, it appears the Arizona press will not be caught committing an act of responsible journalism.
SBA and its sponsor, the Judiciary, do nothing to address, let alone advance, the interests and viewpoints of Arizona attorneys. This is the impetus for AZAACPR and the reason for this website.
(c) 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Arizona Attorneys Against Corrupt Professional Regulation and The Bartus Trust
