Legal News

Kay challenges legitimacy of State Bar Court in his own defense

By Richard Binder

San Francisco trial lawyer Philip Kay is boldly attacking the State Bar's discipline system as inherently unfair in his own defense against the agency. Part of his strategy is referring to documents and reports generated in a former State Bar prosecutor's own heated legal battle.

In court papers filed in recent weeks by his attorney, Pasadena's Jason Oliver, Kay ? whose State Bar Court trial for allegedly impugning judges and illegally splitting fees is set to begin March 16 ? uses State Bar internal reports and documents from former State Bar prosecutor Alan Konig's now-defunct federal suit. He uses them to paint the State Bar Court as a sort of old boys' club in which judges and prosecutors routinely engage in ex parte communications to the detriment of lawyers who come through the system.

Oliver fired off a letter earlier this month suggesting that three San Francisco-based State Bar Court judges should consider recusing themselves from Kay's case. And on Wednesday, Karl Olson, a partner with San Francisco's Levy, Ram & Olson, filed a motion in San Francisco federal court seeking to unseal several more documents in Konig's retaliation suit that he and Kay believe would help Kay in State Bar Court.

Konig, who now works for the U.S. Department of Education in San Francisco, was prosecuting Kay before he and the State Bar parted ways. Olson argued in court papers that unsealed documents in the federal suit indicate Konig's bosses didn't think the current charges against Kay were solid just a few years ago, and that sealed documents might reveal more.

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).