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Comment by ugh123 | Hacker News Reader

>The respondent’s statement in his January 13, 2018 letter that the defendant “had yet to respond to the complaint” was false and misleading, and the respondent knew that it was false and misleading when he made it. The January 13, 2018 letter failed to advise the court of the months-long history of communication between the parties, beginning in July 2017, as mentioned above.

How is that not outright fraud?

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I'm also curious about that, but we should recognize that whether it's fraud and whether it should be prosecuted as fraud are different questions. For a conviction you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, where disbarment seems (from a cursory search) to merely require preponderance of the evidence. If that's right, some people will rightly be disbarred for crimes they cannot be convicted of.

Lawyers rule the entire justice system. Not even the "good" ones want to normalize the prosecution of lawyers for committing crimes while practicing law.

That may also be the case, and not knowing a lot about this case it does seem like prosecution is probably merited here, and we should push back on tendencies like that across industries. My comment still stands, though; we should be quicker to disbar over a thing than to prosecute, evidentiarily speaking.

On the contrary, I believe the existence of and ease of disbarring works as a substitute for prosecution, albeit under different terms of "law" and "justice-- if you can call it that.

At the same time, the very existence of disbarring without the due process required for convictions, also means, the "good ones" wouldn't risk it by speaking up and demanding "prosecution" of their peers.

I see what you're saying, and... maybe? I do think we need to pick apart two questions that I don't think I kept clear. On the one hand, "given the rules we have, how much can we infer bad behavior of decision-makers in that system because someone is disbarred for a crime they are not charged with"; this is more of what I had in mind, and I think I stand by my position of "based on the rules we should expect to see that when the system is performing nominally, though it's not a bad idea to look closer." On the other hand, there is the question of whether these rules are appropriate. I think philosophically there is something to say for "we should disqualify people from positions of trust faster than we should jail them", but that doesn't rule out the possibility that the system is abused in the ways you describe. The practical probably should win out over the philosophical, here, but I don't have the information myself to weigh in.

> "we should disqualify people from positions of trust faster than we should jail them"

Sure, but the revoking of license can be codified into the law, essentially, the same "disqualification" but under the same framework of law as for any other crime and punishment, most of it anyways.

I don't think I have a problem with that, although I would have to see the specific proposal, talk to people, and think deeper before I would wave my magic wand to make it happen.

> Not even the "good" ones want to normalize the prosecution of lawyers for committing crimes while practicing law.

Eh. Prosecuting someone for borderline calls and novel arguments is a slippery slope, but unambiguous and intentional fraud isn't that.

As ridiculous as that is, claiming his grandfather died as an excuse then claiming the court lacked jurisdiction and decorum by asking for proof is really something.

Damn.

His Grandfather did die, just three days before the day he claimed, according to Leonard French (Lawful Masses)'s stream on the topic

Maybe I should read the article again but I thought the grandfather died in April but the excuse was for November.

"But perhaps the most bizarre story involves Liebowitz missing an April 12, 2019 hearing, explaining that his grandfather had passed."

"The respondent also admitted that his grandfather died on April 9, 2019, and was buried that same day."

My source was also the Lawful Masses stream, but it sounded like the original excuse was made in April, but it took until November for him to actually produce the death certificate to prove that he had lied about when his grandfather had died.

It sounds like he didn't lie though?

His grandfather did pass away a few days prior.

Depending upon what was happening with the related family, there can be a whole bunch of things that need urgently taking care of in relation to it.

That point is made in the article - he could have simply said the Grandfather died that week, and it would have been accepted. Instead he doubled down on going on attack, most likely because it did feel like a lie when he said it or was not the actual reason he missed the proceedings.

One of the risks of operating in bad faith is that people will stop giving you the benefit of a doubt.

This also took me a second The issue is he failed to show for a hearing.

We miss things all the time: Flights, meetings, tests, etc.

We have normalized missing to then try to explain after the fact. Thats not how it works for the courts. You must show up unless you are physically unable to do so. Yhis is why the burial date mattered.

Clearly a death on the same day would make it impossible to attend. But a few days prior would mean its not impossible. You simply need to notify and a new date is granted. Its just poor planning on the plaintiff side.

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