Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The South Carolina Supreme Court issued a public reprimand to an attorney who "wrote a letter to a Workers' Compensation Commissioner venting outrage over a ruling...adverse to [the lawyer's] client. [He] admits the tone of and descriptive speech contained in the letter were abusive and brought disrepute and disrespect to a tribunal engaged in the administration of justice, and the letter could be described as disruptive to the tribunal." He also had written an escrow check to "cash" and wrote a trust check that was returned for insufficient funds.
The court does not but should provide enough information about the "descriptive" language to give lawyers an idea how far over the line the letter was. Of course, this was undoubtedly one of those letters (I've written many myself) that should have been sent to the circular file rather than the named recipient. (Mike Frisch)