TN Supreme Court upholds four year suspension of Knox County attorney

by Lee Davis

The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled to uphold a four year suspension of former Knox County Law Director and attorney Bill Lockett. Mr. Lockett is pictured (left) with his attorney Tom Dillard.
While working for Kennerly, Montgomery & Finley in which he was a shareholder, Bill Lockett performed legal services for clients and failed to remit fees owed to the law firm. Members of the law firm confronted the attorney about the misappropriated legal fees shortly after the attorney resigned his position at the law firm to assume elected public office as Law Director for Knox County. As a result of his conduct, Lockett pleaded guilty to theft and to willful failure to file income tax returns. Here is the plea agreement. During a subsequent investigation, the Board of Professional Responsibility discovered that the attorney had accepted loans from the law firm’s clients while he was employed at the law firm. A hearing panel of the Board of Professional Responsibility found that Lockett should be suspended for four years. Here is his letter of resignation as Knox County Law Director.

Lockett appealed, and Knox County chancery court applied additional mitigating factors to reduce the suspension to two years. The Tennessee Supreme Court holds that the chancery court erred in modifying the judgment without finding that any of the circumstances in Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 9, section 1.3 applied.
The Tennesse Supreme Court also holds that the hearing panel erred in imputing a conflict of interest to Lockett with respect to the loan from the law firm’s client and in misapplying aggravating and mitigating factors. Despite these errors, the Supreme Court concludes that the length of suspension imposed by the hearing panel is consistent with the sanctions imposed on attorneys for similar conduct.
The Supreme Court therefore reverses the chancery court’s reduction of the suspension to two years and affirm the hearing panel’s imposition of a four-year suspension.

Baumgartner’s Attorneys Get Three Months to Prepare

The Knoxville case involving disgraced former judge Richard Baumgartner moved forward last week with news that his defense attorneys, Don Bosch and Ann Short, filed a motion before U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley asking that he declare the case “complex.” 

Though the name may seem odd and beside the point, it’s important to a case’s timeline. If a case is declared “complex” it will give the defense more time to review discovery submitted by the prosecution, postponing the currently scheduled July 18 trial. 

Bosch and Short told Judge Shirley that they had only begun to scratch the surface of the voluminous discovery turned over by the government. Moreover, for them to do their jobs properly they’ll need additional time to review everything and properly brief their client. They state that the July 18 date currently set for trial is inappropriate given the amount of work still left to do.

Federal prosecutors disagreed, saying that the defense was only seeking a delay for delay’s sake. They raised that Bosch and Short represented Baumgartner back in 2011 when he pled guilty to one count of official misconduct. The TBI had initiated an investigation of him in 2010 and after news came to light of his misdeeds the government offered a deal to avoid further damage to the Knox County criminal justice system. Given that both Bosch and Short reviewed all the evidence at the time, the prosecution now says their claims of unpreparedness are ridiculous. The prosecutors wrote, “It is unlikely that defense counsel would have advised defendant to plead guilty to a felony in state court without first evaluating the evidence against defendant.”

The defense counters saying that the investigation against their client was continued by the TBI after the plea deal was accepted and that, as a result, mountains of new information remains to be reviewed. Interviews were conducted and filed were gathered, none of which were available the first time around. 

It was announced later last week that Judge Shirley approved a deal struck between the two sides granting a three-month continuance, so that trial is not set to begin until October 23^rd. This amounts to a victory for both sides. The defense received a delay and longer time to review and prepare their case. The prosecution avoided having the trial labeled “complex” and kept the case subject to the federal speedy trial act. 

Though Baumgartner pled guilty to avoid further prosecution just like the one currently proceeding, further allegations of misconduct that he was not initially charged with have since been unearthed. These include his doctor shopping, using his mistress (one of his own Drug Court graduates, Denna Castleman) to get pills, using his influence to help her avoid trouble with prosecutors and judges, lying about being her lawyer and helping her hide a failed drug test. His actions with Castleman are at the heart of the current federal case filed in May. Baumgartner is currently charged with and scheduled for trial on July 18^th for seven counts of misprision of a felony. Each count accuses him of either covering up Castleman’s crimes or failing to report them to the proper authorities. Misprision of a felony carries a maximum prison term of three years. 

Yet another interesting twist occurred earlier last week when, on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips, who was scheduled to preside over Baumgartner’s trial, recused himself. Phillips has not released any word as to why he asked to have the case reassigned and the decision now rests in the hands of Chief U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier to assign Phillips’ replacement.

Source: “Baumgartner seeks delay in his federal trial,” by Jamie Satterfield, published at KnoxNews.com.

See Our Related Blog Posts:

The Baumgartner Debacle Continues

Judge Baumgartner Saga Continues 

Fen-phen scamming attorneys get no relief from the 6th Circuit

SHIRLEY A. CUNNINGHAM , JR.

A federal appeals court has affirmed the convictions of lawyers William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. for running a “massive scheme to defraud their clients” in a major Kentucky fen-phen case. The two prominent plaintiff's lawyers were convicted of wire fraud for stealing the bulk of a 2001 settlement from 440 clients, who ended up receiving only about 37% of the $200 million that the manufacturer of fen-phen, American Home Products, agreed to pay for their injuries. The once popular diet drug was shown to cause heart valve damage and was the subject of many lawsuits following its having been pulled from the market.

The 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals held while there were minor flaws in their 2009 trial, all were harmless given the extent of their crimes. The attorneys were convicted of scamming clients by taking nearly two-thirds of a $200 million settlement. 

The Court refused to believe that the two attorneys were simply in over their heads, deciding instead that they had actively lied to clients and the court, engaged in destruction of documents and shifted money between a multitude of accounts all to avoid detection. 

The panel affirmed an order that required the two lawyers pay $127.6 million to their victims as restitution. 

One of the defendant’s lawyer claimed that while he’s disappointed with the ultimate ruling he’s not done fighting for his client. He said he would now be asking the full court to reconsider the ruling and if that fails, ask that the US Supreme Court hear the case. 

Kerry Harvey, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, who was responsible for prosecuting the two said the ruling was gratifying because “it brings us one step closer to securing justice for the many victims.” Harvey said the government had been collecting assets but was legally not permitted to distribute them while the case was on appeal. Angela Ford, an attorney representing most of the victims of Gallion’s and Cunningham’s fraud, said, “It has been a long fight, and this is a tremendous milestone.”

Gallion, 61, who is serving 25 years at a federal prison camp in Oakdale, La., is not eligible for release until Dec. 8, 2029, while Cunningham, 57, who is serving 20 years at a camp in Yazoo, Miss., has a release date of Aug. 15, 2025.

USA. v. SHIRLEY A. CUNNINGHAM , JR. Read: “Fen-Phen lawyers' convictions upheld for defrauding clients,” by Andrew Wolfson, published at Courier-Journal.com.

Earlier:

Lawyers convicted of scamming millions from fen-phen suit get unsympathetic hearing at 6th Circuit 

Federal sentencing discretion under attack