Can a lawyer quit right in the middle of your case w/o notifying the client?

[CherylAnn]

Hi,

We are right in the middle of a complicated financial elder abuse case that was filed a year ago and we have not heard from our lawyer for almost 3 weeks. He emailed a copy of a draft to us of a possible proposal for a settlement agreement for us to approve or edit, but it was also in the wrong format, docx so we couldn't open it. We emailed him back right away and requested he sent it to us in a .pdf, txt. or .doc format just as he had before when he us sent copies of different documents, but he's completely ignored all our emails and requests for anything including the agreement. We know he's there as his secretary has emailed us and told us this, but lately she's apparently not answering our emails either now.

We have a court date also coming up fairly soon, and don't know what to think or do about this. Did he quit? Changing lawyers right in the middle of a case would be "complicated" and probably a very expensive thing to do, to say the least. Can a lawyer do this to a client? Quit right in the middle of a case without at least notifying the client in writing by mail, email or at least a phone call?

We know he's breaching the firm's attorney/client agreement we signed with him by not getting back to us within 24 hours. Plus the fact he did not send us an invoice for his services for 7 months although we kept asking him to over and over again and the agreement was we were to billed monthly instead, but he's not breaking any "laws" here, is he? He's probably breaching "morals" and "ethics" codes or something, isn't he? Notifying the state Bar obviously won't get our case over with and a lot of extra time and work.

BTW, I am 79 years old and my ex-husband is 81. He is actually the client and the financial elder abuse case is filed against our eldest daughter for forgery, fraud, conversion, undue influence, breach of a confidential relationship, changing wills, deleting beneficiaries, putting his property in TN into a Life Estate and then driving him out here to CA and dripping him off at a motel near his brother with just a few clothes in a suitcase so she could move into his still fully furnished house in TN herself because her home in CA was in foreclosure and needed a place to move to, etc., etc.

So, please, how can we get our case settled if he won't communicate with us? Are we supposed to go to his office and try and "force" him to talk to us to find out what's going on with our case? We really don't see what good that would do as how could we trust him after he's done something like this while obviously knowing how much he has to be stressing us out waiting every day for weeks for a response from him.

What can or should we do about this? Please, help!

 

[army judge]

The file format is easy to overcome.
A "docx" format is the latest version of a Word document.
Simply save the file (or change the name when you save it to letter.doc), then open it using an older version of Word.
It might have some odd characters, but you'll be able to read it.
Or, get someone who has the latest Word version to open and save it as the older version of the document.
There are many ways to achieve the same thing.
You've come too far, with a complex case, to make changes now.

 

[fredrikklaw]

California Bar and Legal Malpractice Lawsuit

CHERYLANN:

Well, for what it will be worth, should your attorney continue in this current A.W.O.L. vein and manages to ruin your case in the process, he will of course be subject to a disciplinary action by the State Bar of California which runs the gamut of severity, starting with a simple in-house Private Reprimand, then going up to Suspension from practice of law for a certain period of time (1 to 3 years), and peaking with the mother of all attorney disciplines; Permanent Disbarment. But this requires you to lodge a formal complaint with California Bar.

You will also have the choice of pursuing the attorney privately by suing him for Legal Malpractice in order to recover damages caused by his negligence.

But as things stand, he is still your attorney and as such, cannot jump ship just for the heck of it and willy nilly; he needs to file with the court a motion to be relieved as counsel and receive the judge's permission and you can be sure he has not as yet moved for such an order because you would have by now received notification of the action.

As to why he has suddenly taken a dive in the code of ethics, I wouldn't even hazard a guess, but I can tell you for certain that such stories are unfortunately aplenty and the smart money would be on not waiting in the wings for too long and taking a proactive route to remedy the situation.
Therefore, I would start by doing a quick check of the attorney's background and disciplinary history. This is a most simple task achieved through State Bar of California's superb website. You can find out where he went to school, when he passed the Bar and whether there has ever been any disciplinary actions or proceedings against him in the past.

Also, do not wait too long for this attorney to surface because you will lose a lot grounds in the case at bar. So, if he is still absent (let's say) by this Friday, my suggestion would be to go shopping for new counsel as you are not going to be receiving sound legal advocacy from this guy even if he returns to the fold tomorrow. Once certain boundaries are breached, they are then better left breached and no attempt should be made at fence-mending.

At the same time, ask the court to put a quick hold on the proceedings until you are once again represented by counsel so that the various statutes of limitations which regulate responses to motions and so forth, do not expire, leaving you high and dry and facing default proceedings.
If he should motion the court to be relieved as counsel, only oppose it in the instance that any granting of his motion should be made contingent on him staying on for a few days more in order to familiarize the new attorney with the case as much as possible and in all aspects of the litigation to date.


fredrikklaw

 

[CherylAnn]

Thank you, Fredrickklaw, very, very much.