Maryland lawyer disbarred for failing to disclose past discipline to Texas bar | Maryland Daily Record

A Maryland lawyer’s second probability to current mitigating components at a disciplinary listening to didn’t save his regulation license.

The state’s highest court docket disbarred the lawyer, Edward A. Malone, in a 54-page opinion issued late final week. The Courtroom of Appeals discovered that Malone “engaged in intentional dishonest conduct” when he didn’t disclose his disciplinary historical past as he utilized to affix the Texas bar.

“Malone’s misconduct concerned not solely fraud but in addition a blatant disregard for the reality and the authorized system on the whole, and the potential for hurt to purchasers,” Decide Shirley M. Watts wrote within the opinion.

The Courtroom of Appeals beforehand granted Malone a short reprieve when it allowed him the prospect to current mitigating components to a listening to decide earlier than being sanctioned.

In an opinion issued earlier this yr, the court docket discovered Malone’s invocation of the Fifth Modification at his deposition within the disciplinary case mustn’t have prevented him from testifying about mitigating components at his evidentiary listening to. The judges despatched the case again to the listening to decide in order that Malone might testify.

However the mitigating components he introduced didn’t assist, the Courtroom of Appeals discovered final week.

The court docket overruled Malone’s objections to the findings of the listening to decide, who wrote that he was “was left with the impression that [Malone] has a basic misunderstanding of authorized ethics on the whole, and specifically, why it’s essentially necessary that attorneys be real and sincere,” in response to the opinion.

On the Fifth Modification challenge, the court docket warned that “we should take care to not chill the great religion invocation of the privilege in opposition to self-incrimination, recognizing that the road between a legitimate and an invalid assertion of the privilege is usually tough to discern.”

Disciplinary points have dogged Malone for years, in response to the opinion.

In 2012, Malone acquired a personal reprimand from then-Chief Decide Deborah Okay. Chasanow in U.S. District Courtroom in Maryland. Chasanow issued the non-public reprimand as a result of Malone had been held in contempt for lacking a listening to in chapter court docket with out correct justification.

In 2011, the Virginia State Bar issued a public reprimand in opposition to Malone for failing to signify purchasers and for failing to reply to a bar counsel investigation. Malone’s Virginia regulation license was then suspended as a result of he didn’t pay disciplinary prices related along with his sanction. His regulation license was forfeited in 2013 after he didn’t pay dues for 2 years, in response to the Courtroom of Appeals opinion.

Malone didn’t disclose any of that disciplinary historical past, or the truth that he was admitted to apply regulation in Virginia, when he utilized to affix the Texas bar, the listening to decide discovered, in violation of Maryland’s guidelines {of professional} conduct for legal professionals.

Malone’s Texas regulation license was withdrawn and canceled in 2016, after the Texas Board of Legislation Examiners realized of the self-discipline he had left off his software.

Malone was additionally indicted in 2016, after his Texas regulation license had been canceled, for “holding himself out as a lawyer” at an occasion the place legal professionals sometimes learn the Declaration of Independence. The indictment was later quashed.

Maryland Bar Counsel Lydia E. Lawless declined to remark for this story. Malone’s lawyer, Craig Brodsky, didn’t return a cellphone name requesting remark.

(Editor’s Be aware: Craig Brodsky writes a month-to-month authorized ethics column for The Each day File.)