Court Says Lawyer's ‘Go to Hell’ Letters Not Enough for Additional Sanction
A lawyer will face an ethics hearing in Washington, D.C., after an appeals court gave him the benefit of the doubt for writing two letters telling bar counsel and a judge to go to hell.
Lawyer Michael H. Ditton had been suspended for five years in Virginia. The District of Columbia Board of Professional Responsibility recommended reciprocal discipline of a five-year suspension and sought also to impose a fitness requirement for reinstatement.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals refused to accept the recommendation and remanded the case for further inquiry.
Ditton had written one of the letters to Virginia bar counsel, according to the Aug. 15 opinion (PDF) by the D.C. appeals court. The letter read: “I refuse to participate or cooperate [in] any way in your criminal and cowardly fascist racketeering conspiracy, otherwise known as the murder Ditton legally game. Go to hell.”
His letter to a judge had similar wording, the opinion said. It referred to the Virginia sanction as “a Hitlerite” and “fascist” decision. “You leave me only my absolute moral superiority that I invoke against you and your co-conspirators,” he wrote. “Go to hell.”
A Virginia court had imposed the five-year suspension in that state after finding that Ditton had been charged with driving while intoxicated and refusing to admit a deputy sheriff who was trying to evict him from his apartment. It also said he had a long history of filing civil actions of questionable merit, including one against his former law firm.
The D.C. appeals court said in a footnote that the letters alone are not sufficient to impose the additional fitness requirement. It also said more information was needed about the criminal cases and the history of questionable court filings. “Perhaps the court was attempting to be kind, but it is fair to say that much litigation is ‘of questionable merit,’ ” the opinion said.
The Legal Profession Blog posted the opinion and questioned the need for a remand in light of the “go to hell” letters. “Not many disciplinary regimes would be indulgent of being told where to go in this manner,” the blog says.
