Missing lawyer faces multiple lawsuits
A suspended South Carolina lawyer has been named as a defendant in multiple lawsuits and is also facing an ongoing legal ethics investigation.
But Mark Brunty appears to be missing, along with the $700,000 that Brunty was supposed to have used to purchase property, his partners in a real estate venture claim in a lawsuit. “It’s flat gone as far as we can tell,” attorney Amanda Bailey, tells the Sun News.
She represents out-of-state investors Morris and Saul Kravecas who have filed suit against Brunty in Horry County Circuit Court. Their complaint contends that Brunty persuaded the brothers to invest with documents on which he had forged the signatures of local business leaders.
Other litigation against Brunty includes a mortgage foreclosure action on his home, in which a deficiency judgment of nearly $300,000 has been obtained; another bank action in which the attorney is alleged to have defaulted on a $50,000 loan; and a malpractice suit that accuses Brunty of an inappropriate relationship with a client’s wife.
The newspaper could not reach Brunty for comment. It reports that his personal telephone was out of service Monday and a voicemail message at his law office said it had temporarily been closed.
Bailey said she was not able to find him to serve him with the Kravecas suit.
Brunty was suspended from practice by the state supreme court in November for reasons that were not stated, under a rule that provides for suspension “upon receipt of sufficient evidence demonstrating that a lawyer poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the public or to the administration of justice.”
