Judge scolds disbarred attorney for practicing
This is the kind of story that gives lawyers a bad name.
It starts with Daye Shinn of Santa Monica, disbarred as a lawyer in 1992. According to Carl Keiser of San Bernardino, Shinn never mentioned his disciplinary blotch when he offered to work for him on Keiser’s personal injury claim against the State of California.
Shinn tried to get off the hook for the $5,000 he took from Keiser by saying he wasn’t really a lawyer; merely a “paralegal.” The true lawyer working on Keiser’s case, said Shinn, was named Steven L. Dobbs.
It turns out Dobbs, a Studio City lawyer, had a little problem of his own. Dobbs, who says he was Shinn’s fraternity brother in college, was disciplined by the State Bar Association in August 2000. The infraction? Employing Shinn, after he had been disbarred.
Keiser, the man who brought the suit to begin with, said he’d never heard of Dobbs.
But it gets more interesting.
The recognized lawyer on Keiser’s case, according to Los Angeles Superior Court files, wasn’t Dobbs at all. It was Howard Allan Lipton of Sherman Oaks, who resigned from the Bar earlier this year with disciplinary charges pending.
Keiser said he’d never heard of Lipton either.
But the State Bar Association has. According to a spokeswoman there, Lipton’s 19-year law career included six counts of disciplinary action. He also moved nine times, at one point taking his practice to Sarasota, Fla. Eight of those moves occurred in four years which ended with his 1998 relocation to Sherman Oaks.
A May 13, 1992 finding from the State Bar Court states that Shinn was “culpable of very serious professional misconduct, including the misappropriation of at least $90,000 of client trust funds” from Santa Monica realtor Oscar Dane.
Dane hired Shinn in 1978, when the City of Santa Monica condemned Dane’s 1927 home to begin construction of the new Santa Monica downtown mall. The City later paid Dane $200,000. In a tangled accounting mess, Shinn illegally “borrowed” more than $180,000 from his client’s funds over the next five years. Shinn was found guilty of “the commingling with his personal funds of over $100,000 of client trust funds...” (See related story.)
Carl and Isabel Keiser were tipped off to irregularities when Keiser got a letter from the State of California stating that his attorney, Lipton, had resigned from the Bar and that he now had two options: Seek new counsel or represent himself.
“We never heard of Mr. Lipton,” explained Isabel Keiser, who testified in Santa Monica Small Claims court last week. “Not at all. We never heard of him until we saw those papers (from the state) with his name on them.”
The couple then logged on to the state Bar’s Web site, which documented the legal histories of Shinn and Lipton.
Keiser said Shinn had a convincing story.
“He told me that he was semi-retired, that he just takes a few cases a year,” Keiser said, adding he wrote a $5,000 check as a retainer for Shinn’s legal services. “I had no reason to question him.”
So Keiser hired Shinn last year to represent him in a personal injury case against the State of California. Keiser, a building maintenance worker in downtown Los Angeles, had sued the state over asbestos exposure in the workplace.
Keiser has since dropped his suit. But he won satisfaction from Santa Monica Judge Pro Tem Ed Schaffer last week. After ruling in favor of Keiser, Judge Schaffer scolded Shinn.
“You’re illegally practicing law without a license,” Schaffer admonished. “Just because you don’t go into court, when you listen to him and do research to advise him on whether he has a valid case or not, you are acting as an attorney.”
Shinn said in his defense that he had told Keiser that he was only a paralegal and that Dobbs — whom Keiser said he’d never heard of — would be his formal lawyer.
“Mr. Shinn, you should not be doing what you’re doing,” Schaffer concluded. “You have been meeting directly with these people, giving legal advice. You have no right to do that.”
“All we want is our $5,000 back. That’s all,” said Isabel Keiser. “I told my husband, ‘Good grief. (Shinn’s) cohorts are all dishonest.’”
Lipton did not return phone calls from the Daily Press. Neither did Shinn. Dobbs refused to answer most questions, but did concede that he and Shinn were fraternity brothers in college. Dobbs also said he has no recollection of doing any legal work in connection with Shinn and that he has “no idea what (Shinn’s) standing with the Bar is.”
When asked if Shinn was the disbarred attorney he had employed in 1995, Dobbs refused to answer directly.
“I’m not saying it was and I’m not saying it wasn’t,” he replied.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 29, 2002. Read the original PDF.