Legal News

No Free Lunch for Kansas In-House Attorney

By Ashby Jones

Most of the attorney misdeeds we write about on this blog tend to be of the high-profile stripe. Think Dickie Scruggs, Bill Lerach and Marc Dreier.

But today, we stumbled upon news of attorney wrongdoing that was just too strange or sad (or both) to ignore. The news comes to us from Kansas, where the Sunflower State’s Supreme Court last week censured an erstwhile in-house attorney at Koch Industries, a large privately held company based in Wichita, Kan. The infraction? For several days running, the attorney, Troy Ellis, entered the Koch cafeteria, got his food, ate his lunch, and left without paying. (Hat tip: Legal Profession Blog).

At first, according to the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling, cafeteria workers saw Ellis pull the old dine-and-ditch. They contacted security, which set up a surveillance camera and caught the man. Ellis initially denied the charges, but conceded when confronted with the evidence:

I am embarrassed and disgusted for myself and apologize to you and the Koch companies. I lied. I stole. I violated the Code of Conduct . . . I apologize. With great humility and a heavy heart, I ask you please to consider my apology in determining your course of action.”

Ellis turned himself in to the Kansas State Bar Association. “I believe it is important that attorneys conduct themselves both in providing services to clients and in their personal affairs in accordance with the requirements of the law,” he wrote in his letter. “I believe that I should self-report a potential conduct issue under the Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct (’Rules’).”

The Supreme Court found that Ellis violated two provisions of the rules. He wasn’t disbarred. His punishment was simply an official censure by the Kansas Supreme Court, publication of the opinion in the Kansas Reports and that he reimburse the cafeteria operators.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).