Suspension urged for lawyer who abandoned 300 cases
A Sacramento attorney who abandoned more than 300 indigent dependency cases
and failed to make 39 court appearances in a one-month period should be suspended
for 18 months, a State Bar Court review panel has decided. If the recommendation
is accepted by the Supreme Court, JULIE L. WOLFF [#142531], 51, also will be
placed on probation for three years and will be required to prove her rehabilitation,
take the MPRE, comply with rule 955 of the California Rules of Court and attend
ethics school.
The ruling came after both Wolff and State Bar prosecutors appealed a hearing
judge’s recommendation that she be publicly reproved.
“This case represents an instance where, during a one-month period,
an attorney lost her ethical footing,” wrote Judge Judith Epstein for
the three-member review panel. Although the judges found the misconduct lasted
only a short time, it affected numerous clients, disrupted court proceedings,
forced continuances and caused some clients to appear in court without counsel.
Wolff’s problems occurred in 1999, when the presiding judge of the Sacramento
juvenile court reorganized the Indigent Defense Program (IDP), through which
Wolff represented parents and sometimes children in dependency matters. When
a contract to handle all IDP matters was awarded to another law firm, Wolff
was the attorney of record for more than 300 clients.
She submitted a document to the court entitled, “In re: All My Cases,” which
she said was intended to serve as her resignation for 319 pending dependency
matters. She did not notify her clients that she was withdrawing and would
not appear at their upcoming hearings.
The judge ordered the document returned to Wolff because he said it was not
a proper motion to withdraw, did not request a hearing date and did not indicate
that any client had been served. The document also did not identify the cases
by name or case number so the judge had no way to determine which matters were
affected by her actions.
Nonetheless, Wolff stopped making appearances for all IDP cases for which
she was attorney of record and returned her files to the program administrator,
believing the cases would be reassigned.
The judge disagreed, saying only the court had the authority to relieve an
attorney of record.
When she failed to make 39 appearances, Wolff’s “absence did not
go unnoticed by the court,” Epstein wrote, “as her failure to make
scheduled appearances disrupted court proceedings, caused continuances and
resulted in some indigents appearing in court unrepresented.”
Wolff was sanctioned $1,500.
The court found that Wolff failed to obey a court order, withdrew from employment
without the court’s permission and without taking steps to protect her
clients’ interests and she failed to inform her clients of significant
developments in their cases.
The review panel rejected Wolff’s arguments that the bar filed disciplinary
charges too late and that the hearing judge should not have relied on the sanctions
order in finding culpability.
Although it considered her 10 years of practice without discipline as mitigation,
the panel also considered “the sheer number of clients and proceedings
affected by (Wolff’s) misconduct,” saying it caused significant
harm to the administration of justice.
The judges also found that Wolff continues to deny culpability, presenting “a
tangled web of excuses” and trying to blame the dependency judge “for
the procedural gridlock” she caused.
Wolff also landed in hot water last April when an appellate court found she
went “over the top” in submitting a brief more than three times
longer than permitted in which she referred to her client’s developmentally
disabled child as “more akin to broccoli.”
“This is an appeal run amok,” wrote the judge, who sent a copy
of his ruling to the State Bar.
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