Bankruptcy

Attorney Advertising, Bankruptcy in Arizona, and Aggressive Lawyers

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

This is just a reaction to an article in The ABA Journal.

In different areas of law, lawyers behave in different ways, because the definition of a good result may differ, and the economics of the practice may require different approaches.

Lawyers who practice domestic relations law, or divorce law, for instance, have been criticized for failing to point out that it makes little sense to spend $100,000 litigating in Divorce Court over who gets custody of the Waring Blender (note: my buddies in that area of law don't do that).

In the area of Bankruptcy Law, whether in big dollar, high end bankruptcy law, or in garden variety, uncontested and ordinary consumer bankruptcy law in Arizona, bankruptcy lawyers are all sensitive to the fact that we're usually working in a zero-sum environment, and racking up unnecessary legal fees is, you know, unnecessary.

But according to the article from the ABA Journal that I'm about to cut-and-paste for your enjoyment, in some areas of the law, lawyers don't just TALK about how aggressive they are.

Here it is, in all it's headlocking glory:

Legal Ethics
Public Defender Choked Prosecutor in Court Hallway, Police Say

Posted Jun 3, 2010 2:55 PM CDT
By Martha Neil

An Illinois prosecutor was hospitalized today after an assistant public defender allegedly choked him in a court hallway in Chicago following a courtroom dispute over setting a hearing date in a post-conviction murder case.

Police said Henry Hams, 47, put a 50-year-old Cook County prosecutor into a "choking headlock" this morning at the criminal courthouse at 26th and California, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

"He had his hands wrapped around his throat and was just kind of riding him down the wall," an unidentified source told the Chicago Tribune.

Another unidentified source said Hams "just lost it and shoved him against the wall" and put his stunned opposing counsel into a headlock after the prosecutor responded unsympathetically to the public defender's complaint about a status date, the Tribune says.

An unidentified bystander told the Sun-Times that Hams said he was sick of being mocked by the prosecutor. Hams, who obtained a one-year professional boxing license in 2006, was charged aggravated battery in a public place and resisting arrest, according to the Sun-Times.

Accounts differ concerning how seriously the unidentified prosecutor was injured. He was treated at Mt. Sinai Hospital and released later Thursday.

One of two Cook County sheriff's deputies who broke up the fight in the courthouse's first-floor main hallway sustained a minor back injury, the Tribune reports.

Hams works in the public defender's post-conviction unit. He is set to appear at a bond hearing Friday, the papers report.

Fisticuffs between Oregon attorneys in a similar courthouse dispute in Portland in 2008 that apparently didn't result in any injuries were handled by a close-at-hand judge, as detailed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post. He gave the battling barristers a good "talking-to" after determining that both were at fault but said he wasn't going to report them to the state bar for a potential attorney discipline case.

Likewise, Multnomah County sheriff's deputies who witnessed the fray took no action.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: bankruptcy attorneys in Arizona, whether or not they're AV rated or AVVO 10 rated, or former Chairmen, or anything else, don't slug it out much in the corridors of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Arizona.

NOTHING HERE CONSTITUTES LEGAL ADVICE RE A CHAPTER 7, CHAPTER 13, CHAPTER 11, OR CHAPTER 12. FIND AN ARIZONA BANKRUPTCY LAWYER WHO IS BOARD CERTIFIED IN BANKRUPTCY LAW, AV RATED, AVVO 10 RATED, ON SUPERLAWYERS, OR JUST VERY EXPERIENCED AND A FORMER CHAIR OF SOME BANKRUPTCY SECTION OR COMMITTEE. NOTHING HERE MAY BE USED AS LEGAL ADVICE IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BANKRUPTCY, WHETHER THAT BANKRUPTCY IS IN PHOENIX, GLENDALE, TEMPE, MESA, SCOTTSDALE, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on June 04, 2010 (boomark / email).