Family Court

Imploding? State Bar's Internal War - Commission on Judicial Performance Funding Withheld

4/4/2016

California's State Auditor reported that the State Bar has failed to protect the public from lawyer misconduct, fraud and other crimes. Pulling no punches, the June 2015 Report was titled: " The State Bar of California ...........Has not Consistently Protected the Public Through It's Attorney Discipline Process and Lacks Accountability".

After decades of concealment and protecting corrupt members, seems the State Bar is imploding. Whistleblower complaints from insiders who knew of buried cases and other secret financial abuses are emerging and a flood of lawsuits and secret settlements are being managed as the Bar struggles to keep their dirty laundry from being aired. An article published March 30, 2016 describes what is going on at the Bar as nothing short of "CIVIL. WAR".

Meanwhile the public is left unprotected and crooked lawyers continue to impose misconduct on many of the 8 million lawsuits the state must manage each year.

The State Bar investigates less than 1% of complaints lodged against their members, and California's State Auditor describes why this harms the public in a 75 page report. For millions of Californians whose complaints went unanswered, they didn't need a report.

"Ethics" in California's legal system appears to be a mandatory course title, not an actual course of conduct that is enforced or monitored by the Bar. This is especially true in family law where so many Californians are impacted by deeply personal and emotional issues such as custody, property and income .

Similar scrutiny is now falling at the feet of California's Commission on Judicial Performance, CJP, the public agency that manages complaints against judges. Two years ago the agency, under direction of Victoria Henley, received a GRADE of "F ", the lowest of public agencies reported I'm a state audit and little appears to have changed.

In March 2016, after a flood of irate citizens stormed State Legislators, having been ignored by the Commission for years,  a budget committee elected to withhold funding to the Commission, until Victoria Henley explained a number of disturbing statistics brought to the attention of legislators in a privately funded special report.

Public outrage after a detailed report comparing California's judicial complaints with systems overseeing judges in other states. The report was published by Court Reform , LLC, and made it impossible for Victoria Henley to escape the spotlight on her own incompetence. (See video of report presentation to California's budget committee).

Media scrutiny over this issue has escalated. In just one week reporters from the Center of Investigative Reporting and news outlets from San Francisco to Los Angeles are covering issues raised in the report, and with a full court press worthy of March Madness-like attention.  Such attention demands the Commission answer for years of inaction, that raped and violated public trust in California's legal system..

In recent months groups from Marin, Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Mateo and Santa Clara County have organized, all intent on bringing  attention to the misconduct of lawyers and judges that have marred California's legal system for decades, especially in family courts.

In Contra Costa, a group of litigants rose up and brought the State Legislature's attention to the issue involving the state's judges. Efforts from Contra Costa activists expanded to family court victims in Sacramento  who started years ago by bringing the public's attention to the issues through production of the documentary Divorce Corp.

By late 2015, activists from Marin and Santa Clara had joined in speaking up against judicial misconduct related to divorce and probate  cases and a team of investigative reporters began covering critical issues of concern to the larger group.

An estimated 1000 plus citizens have organized to address the State Bar, Commission on Judicial Performance and individual counties engaging in judicial misconduct that harms the public confidence in California's legal system.

The group appears  in the form of Super bowl protests in Santa Clara County, petitions on Change.org, and social media campaigns intended to shed light on bad judges and lawyers, and the agencies that over see them. A recent #FireVictoriaHenleyNow. campaign is just one recent example of how the dedicated group refuses to allow these issues to continue to be buried. The effort to withhold public funding to CJP, is a result of years of frustration from citizens in all California counties.

The committee that withheld the Commission's funding, was led by Assembly Member Nora Campos of San Jose. Ms. Campos's home district has been a hotbed for both judicial. and lawyer misconduct in recent months, misconduct that is seeping from San Jose's courts in Santa Clara County and outraging local voters.

By way of example, Judge Scott, of Santa Clara County, was recently publicly admonished by CJP, after engaging in, and flirting with, one side during a criminal prosecution case. The issue was brought forward by the DA's office, at the same time other complaints against judges in Santa Clara, from private citizens, were ignored.

In Silicon Valley , Jeff Rosen, Santa Clara County's District Attorney , has indicted family lawyer and custody expert Valerie Houghton for fraud, theft and embezzlement, along with her husband, an Intro realtor. Terry Houghton.

Ms. Houghton, a family lawyer and licensed custody expert, had been the subject of decades of complaints stemming from mothers who claimed Ms. Houghton gave paid false testimony in custody disputes, that almost always favored a wealthy father.

Family Court activists are demanding to know why their complaints were ignored for decades and why Ms. Houghton was only charge by the DA, after her conduct was reported by a wealthy real estate family from Gilroy, California.

Members of a grassroots organization based in Santa Clara County, have been tracking  family lawyer complaints with the State Bar, which appear to have been mostly ignored for decades, similar to what was recently reported on CJP.

Santa Clara Court litigant complaints regarding crooked lawyers; Valerie Houghton, Bradford Baugh and Heather Allan have been launched at the Bar for years, and simply ignored.

Bradford Baugh was previously   the subject of a Commission of Judicial Performance's recommendation where Judge Stewart was repeatedly warned to disclose his close relationship with Mr. Baugh, who acted before Judge Stewart as a children's lawyer in bitter custody battles in Santa Clara.

Eventually Judge Stewart was encouraged to slink off into retirement, leaving a wake of custodial custody order destruction in his path and leaving Bradford Baugh to continue to act ethically challenged before other family court judges including Mary Ann Grill, Derek Woodhouse and James Towery, where his misconduct appears to have flourished for three decades.

A committee in Santa Clara has tracked multiple State Bar complaints filed against Mr. Baugh, based on misuse of his trust account,  financial misconduct and professional conduct violations, all ignored for decades by California's State Bar.

The State Bar has also received complaints that lawyer  Nat Hales accept cash bribes (delivered by Brad Baugh )  and that lawyer Heather Allan was improperly sent funds from Brad Baugh, showing the flagrant financial misconduct tolerated for years, at the expend of the County's children and poorest citizens. This information has led to an unraveling of a sorted tale that leads to a path of RICO violations , fraud and theft galore, which is hard for the Bar to continue to ignore, as they additionally face civil war in their own ranks.

Did the State Bar's and Commission on Judicial Performance's failure to act on complaints constitute concealment of evidence ? If not a violation of public trust, isn't such an issue a matter of public interest ?
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6 Comments

anthony pappas

4/4/2016 05:24:04 am

Good progress being made. However, your BLOG POST IS HARD TO READ since the black type is faint and so is the blue type. The impact from your blog posts is being lost when people have to strain to read the message. PLEASE FIX THAT.

Jane Q Public

4/5/2016 08:02:30 am

thanks we will

Juan Rodriguez

4/4/2016 10:23:05 am

I've seen this happen to me many times. Lies told in court and on court documents to gain upper hand. Also judge and lawyer teaming just because they spend so much time working together they even get special treatments. I've noticed the last few times my cases being called at the end when everyone is gone but the party involved in my case. I hope they hold all responsible accountable for the damage they've caused to the children involved and the parents who go broke because they felt the system would see the truth and help them.

Jane Q Public link

4/4/2016 11:20:21 am

We hope so too! thanks for speaking out !!

Karyl Krug, M.A., J.D.

4/10/2016 10:03:40 pm

I hope you don't think things are better in Arizona. Arizona fails to screen grievances and files even meritless grievances, to look like they are protecting the public (which they are not) while keeping the lawyers scared of the Bar. The Arizona Bar protects the "merit selected" judges, who rotate through "specialty courts" while not necessarily having any previous experience in that particular specialty, which totally defeats the purpose of specialty courts.

Meanwhile, they treat Arizona lawyers in exactly the opposite way, acting like you are a baby lawyer if you do anything for the first time, even if you win the case and have 23 years of litigation experience in state and federal court. Even if you do it pro bono and the complaint was filed by a whack job you never represented. So while 1% sounds low, numbers nation wide do not tell the whole story. The lawyers in Arizona fear and hate the Bar, except for the few beneficiaries of the Bar. The AZ Bar refuses to tell AZ lawyers how our Bar dues are spent. There is a fight under way at the Arizona Legislature right now to make the mandatory AZ Bar non-mandatory.

Several women at the Arizona House testified that they had been sexually assaulted by an Arizona Bar employee, formerly a bad cop who killed a guy, a drug dealer, and an ex-con. And the Bar did nothing to the guy except quietly move him out of the bar building. He used to be the director of the Arizona State Bar's Member Assistance Program. He was the program. In the aftermath, the Arizona Bar installed a laughable shell of a program administered by a staffer who administers four other alleged programs. The Bar bragged about their Members' Assistance Program in front of the legislature, but their budget for the 2013-14 biennium shows that the Arizona Bar spent a whole $50 for that program, compared with in excess of $350,000 in Texas. I've been a Texas lawyer since 1993 and volunteered for the Texas Lawyers' Assistance Program for years, so I know the difference between a real program and no program.

There is a happy medium between prosecuting 1% of grievances and pursuing every meritless grievance that comes through the door. The Texas State Bar was great about screening out meritless grievances. In 23 years I have never heard any complaints about the Texas State Bar. My ethics record up to now has been totally spotless.

We moved to Arizona in 2011. My problems with the Arizona State Bar started with my very first job at the Maricopa County Superior Court. I took a job as one of two capital staff attorneys, helping judges statewide who were handling death penalty cases. I did not last very long because the other capital staff attorney was not an attorney, in Arizona or anywhere else. But she used her attorney title publicly without letting anyone know she was not really an attorney. That is the Unauthorized Practice of Law, a felony in Texas but only a bar ethics problem in Arizona. I freaked out when she used my Texas credentials on a grant request to the Arizona Supreme Court, asking the Court for a raise. Being an experienced criminal lawyer, I knew this was grant fraud and called the Arizona State Bar ethics hotline. As I expected, they told me to report both things or I could be held accountable as an accessory after the fact.

I stepped right into a viper pit. I was fired 2 days later, never to get another job in Arizona again. The Arizona Supreme Court and the Arizona State Bar covered the entire thing up. The Capital Staff Attorneys were paid out of a grant funded by statute by the legislature. An Arizona Supreme Court employee who administers the grant changed the woman's title to "capital litigation law clerk" and changed the permissible uses of the grant fund to include "capital litigation law clerks." I reported this to the Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, who turned the matter over to her administrative employee to fix, and who did not tell me that the judge who illegally fired me was her former law partner. The only consequence that any of these people got is that the pretend-attorney entered into a "memorandum of understanding" with the Arizona State Bar, admitting nothing and promising never to do it again. That woman pretended to be an attorney, with the full knowledge of court administrators and some judges, for more than five years, in death penalty cases. I saw some of the orders she wrote for judges in death penalty cases within a minutes after she e-mailed them to a judge, who may or may not have known she was not an attorney.

I testified before a House subcommittee against the Arizona State Bar in October and November 2015. It was shocking to me how many times AZ Bar representatives lied to and tried to mislead the subcommittee. As an attorney I have never lied to a tribunal of any kind ever.

I was told the Arizona State Bar was vindictive and that they might target me. Sure enough, 12 business days after I testified, the Arizona State Bar elected to proc

4/10/2016 10:15:01 pm

(Continuation of previous post):

I was told the Arizona State Bar was vindictive and that they might target me. Sure enough, 12 business days after I testified, the Arizona State Bar elected to proceed with a meritless grievance against me. The letter sending the case off to the Arizona Supreme Court said twice that their decision to proceed had nothing whatsoever to do with my testimony. They would do well to read George Lakoff's book, "Don't Think of an Elephant."

In Arizona, the state Bar is just an arm of the Supreme Court. So the bar complaint was sent over to a different arm of the Supreme Court to send to me. It was not Bates stamped, so I'm guessing it was about 400 pages, about 100 pages of which accused me of being a "Republican hater." I guess because I used to be a Democrat and am now a registered Independent, even though I won everything for my Republican clients. I was not apprised of what I was supposed to have done wrong, but told to answer 400 pages of general insanity.

When I subsequently testified in front of the Senate, I mentioned that, after my House testimony, I had received the first bar complaint I had ever been asked to answer in my entire career, and there were gasps in the room. A bit later, I received a hand-delivered letter from State Bar Counsel John Furlong asking me permission to release "selected details" of the complaint against me, in an effort to tell their side of the story, I guess. I think the home delivery was supposed to scare me. Furlong is also mentioned in the same memo where ethics counsel referred to me as a "whistleblower" and was figuring out what to do next.

The bummer of it all is that the Supreme Court Chief Justice involved in this mess uses Holocaust victims to show that the judiciary in Arizona would want you to come forward if there were any illegalities taking place within the judiciary, as happened with the Nazis. Well, that was a big fat lie.

The Senate has yet to vote. The insane bar complaint against me has yet to be resolved. The complaining non-client was represented by lawyer Dennis Wilenchik, a lawyer famous across the land for threatening to anally rape a client over about $1000, for which he was on bar probation. Buried in the 400 pages is correspondence with Mr. Wilenchik over my conduct, shamefully winning my client's pro bono case.

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Imploding? State Bar's Internal War - Commission on Judicial Performance Funding Withheld

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