Legal News

February 11th deemed a Fine day to be disbarred

By Richard Binder

The California Supreme Court ordered Wednesday that a prominent Beverly Hills attorney be disbarred for filing a stream of disqualification motions and other papers containing what the State Bar Court found to be false and frivolous charges regarding members of the state bench.

The high court, at its weekly conference in San Francisco, voted 6-0 to deny review and to adopt the State Bar Court?s recommendation that Richard I. Fine lose his license to practice law.

The hearing judge said Fine ?engaged in what amounts to an almost never-ending attack on anyone (including attorneys and judicial officers) who disagreed with him or otherwise got in his way.? Fine, the judge went on to say, ?kept digging himself into deeper and deeper problems? and failed ?to appreciate the harm he has imposed on so many people and on the court system.?

Fine, the onetime head of the Los Angeles City Attorney?s antitrust unit and counsel for the plaintiffs in a number of highly publicized class actions and taxpayer suits, has blamed his troubles on state judges and other officials whom he accuses of retaliating against him for his years of challenges to the benefits paid to Los Angeles Superior Court judges by the county.

Fine claims that judges who receive the benefits have a conflict of interest in any case involving the county, and that they have, over the years, improperly failed to disclose the conflict and to disqualify themselves from cases to which the county is a party.

Read the full story here.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on February 13, 2009 (boomark / email).