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No First Amendment Protection for Lawyer's Rants

By Jeralyn, Section Law Related
Posted on Sat Oct 11, 2003 at 11:20:08 PM EST
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Lawyers beware....we now have less First Amendment protections in our personal lives than other citizens.

According to this Connecticut ruling, we're officers of the Court even when we're off-duty!

An attorney's poison-pen letter to former West Hartford Probate Judge John A. Berman is not protected free speech, a Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled late last month, upholding a reprimand lodged against Joseph Notopoulos.

The West Hartford, Conn., lawyer had argued that he wrote and sent the letter in his capacity as a private citizen, not a member of the bar, and therefore shouldn't be disciplined under ethics rules prohibiting attorneys from engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice or making statements intended to disrupt a tribunal.

Not so said the Court:

But ruling in Notopoulos v. Statewide Grievance Committee, New Britain Superior Court Judge William P. Murray found otherwise. "The Rules of Professional Conduct bind attorneys to uphold the law and to act in accordance with high standards in both their personal and professional lives," wrote Murray citing appellate rulings in Statewide Grievance Committee v. Egbarin and Statewide Grievance Committee v. Scluger.

So is Notopoulos going to appeal? Maybe not.

He is considering a further appeal, but acknowledged the reprimand has "little consequence to me because I'm a non-practicing lawyer." He serves as a Hartford Judicial District magistrate, he said. "I'm tempted to let [Murray's ruling] stand," Notopoulos added, "as a monument to flawed jurisprudence."

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