Friday Frivolity: Georgia Attorney Disciplined For Changing the Date on a Contract

I remind seasoned readers and alert new readers to our Friday Frivolity feature. Posts that appear in this series fall into a few categories. Some of them are just amusements with no connection to contracts law. Some of them are a stretch — contracts adjacent. Today’s post falls in the latter category. The case reported on below involves a contract but is really a matter of professional ethics. Look at us, breaking through the silos of legal education!

In September, 2021, a Georgia attorney filed a complaint on behalf of his clients, appending as Exhibit A to the complaint an undated contract, which the attorney designated as dating from March 26, 2016. After defendant filed a motion to dismiss arguing, inter alia, that the statute of limitations had expired, the attorney filed motions and responses, attaching the same contract but now dating it May 12, 2019. At a hearing, the attorney admitted to having changed the date. The judge dismissed the case.

Undeterred, the attorney filed a motion seeking to reopen the case. The defendant opposed and sought attorneys’ fees. The attorney once again admitted to having changed the dates on Exhibit A, claiming that he did so negligently, in ignorance of the rules. The judge denied the attorney’s motion and granted defendant’s motion for attorney’s fees. A special master later determined that the attorney had thirty years of experience working with trial exhibits and had in fact altered Exhibit A, not negligently, but intentionally, in order to “deceive the court and gain favor for his client’s case.”

The Special Master recommended disbarment, citing violation of Rules 3.3, 4.1, and (by implication) 8.4 of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct. A Review Board remanded the matter to the Special Master for further fact-finding, but before that occurred, both the attorney and the State Bar appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.

The Georgia Supreme Court disbarred the attorney and denied his motion for reconsideration. The Court was satisfied that the Special Master had applied the proper standard, and it rejected the attorney’s objection that the Special Master failed to consider all aggravating and mitigating factors. The attorney had no prior disciplinary history, but the Court concluded that the attorney’s “dishonesty, fraud, and deceit in twice submitting to the court altered evidence in the underlying proceeding” rendered disbarment the appropriate disciplinary measure. The Court rejected the attorney’s claim that he had shown adequate remorse and cooperated with the inquiry, as he had failed to explain why he had committed the deception and insisted that the error was a product of negligence long after the Special Master had concluded that the error was an intentional attempt to deceive the court.

Hat tip to David Kluft, who posted about the case on Mastodon.