Robert Lehman, Xsquire | DISBARRED

Indi­ana. Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

On this date in the Hoosier State, the Indi­ana Supreme Court dis­barred lawyer Robert E. Lehman [#101145] for com­mit­ting the fed­eral felony of will­fully mak­ing a false tax return.

Lehman did not chal­lenge the Indi­ana Supreme Court Dis­ci­pli­nary Commission’s com­plaint for dis­ci­pli­nary action and the Hear­ing Offi­cer, Cyn­thia S. Emkes, found Lehman vio­lated the Ini­d­i­ana Rules of Pro­fes­sional Con­duct pro­hibit­ing the com­mis­sion of a “crim­i­nal act that reflects adversely on a lawyer’s hon­esty, trust­wor­thi­ness, or fit­ness as a lawyer in other respects and engag­ing in con­duct involv­ing dis­hon­esty, fraud, deceit, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and other stuff Cal­i­for­nia lawyers can get by with.

In deter­min­ing the level of appro­pri­ate dis­ci­pline Cindy found that Herr Lehman “acted out of a self­ish moti­va­tion” and that he has a sub­stan­tial dis­ci­pli­nary his­tory” includ­ing: fail­ing to dis­close to a per­sonal injury client, that he would retain one-third of sub­ro­ga­tion amounts owed by the client to his insur­ance com­pany (pub­lic rep­ri­mand– 1997); show­ing jury wit­ness ques­tions to his wit­ness before the judge could rule on oppos­ing counsel’s objec­tion– result­ing in a mis­trial; remov­ing from oppos­ing counsel’s table, despite counsel’s objec­tion, a book that con­tained oppos­ing counsel’s notes con­cern­ing cross-examination of Respondent’s wit­ness (pub­lic rep­ri­mand– 2004); telling oppos­ing coun­sel his clients wanted to report oppos­ing coun­sel for uneth­i­cal con­duct, but if he agreed to a con­tin­u­ance of the trial, Respon­dent thought he could dis­suade his clients (sus­pended for 120 days 2007)– only 120 days… isn’t that extortion?

Indi­ana Supreme Court Jus­tices C.J. Shep­ard, Dick­son and JJ Boehm con­cured with the Hear­ing Offices dis­ci­pline rec­om­men­da­tion. Jus­tices Sul­li­van and JJ Rucker, con­curred, except that they would impose a three-year sus­pen­sion with­out auto­matic rein­state­ment– i.e., it should be okie doki for crim­i­nals to prac­tice law in Indiana.

[Case Doc­u­ment]