By Sarah Richardson
On March 20, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals temporarily suspended the law license of local attorney E. Lavoyd Morgan Jr., pending a full hearing on ethical charges filed against him. A 22-count Statement of Charges is currently being considered by a Hearing Panel Subcommittee of the Lawyer Disciplinary Board. The charges range from dishonesty, misappropriation of client funds, mishandling cases, and more.
The Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed charges against Morgan in September, stating that he had committed 134 instances of violating 19 different Rules of Professional Conduct.
According to the Supreme Court’s order, Morgan has denied the charges, arguing that the complaints against him were the result of circumstances beyond his control, including medical problems he says kept him from responding to clients for several months. The order also indicates that Morgan accused a former employee of embezzlement, and he blames said employee for several of the alleged financial improprieties charged in the complaints against him.
However, despite Morgan’s defenses, Justice John Hutchison said in the opinion, “Having reviewed this matter, we find sufficient evidence to initially demonstrate that the respondent has violated the West Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct and poses a substantial threat of irreparable harm to the public. Accordingly, we grant the ODC’s petition for interim suspension, effective immediately.”
The opinion says, “The sheer number of ethics complaints pending against the respondent is astounding,” and adds, “There are multiple allegations of failing to act diligently, failing to adequately communicate with his clients, exhibiting a lack of candor and outright dishonesty, and failing to ensure that his employees acted in a manner consistent with the respondent’s ethical obligations.”
One count against Morgan states that multiple payment vouchers in 2016 and 2017 “were replete with false information, errors, and instances of overbilling. On at least thirty-four separate dates, the respondent reported billable hours of over eighteen hours per day—and on some of those dates, he reported over twenty-two hours in a day. The Statement of Charges asserts that on at least one date, he claimed an impossible 28.8 billable hours in a single day.”
Along with the allegations of overbilling, over 21 clients are represented in the Statement of Charges, with a majority having filed ethics complaints against Morgan.
In deciding to suspend Morgan’s license before a full hearing on the charges against him, the Supreme Court found the allegations that Morgan had mishandled and misappropriated client money to be “particularly worrisome.”
Under the Rules of Professional Conduct, a lawyer is required to keep his or her client’s money in a client trust account, separate from the lawyer’s own funds, and the lawyer may not use client funds for the lawyer’s own purposes. The court recounted several complaints against Morgan for the alleged misappropriation of client funds, noting that those allegations were “essentially uncontested” or that Morgan had “failed to provide an adequate response” to them. Under those circumstances, the court found “it is clear from the limited record before us that the respondent has misappropriated client funds in at least some of the matters set forth in the Statement of Charges.”
The document concludes, “For the foregoing reasons, the ODC’s RLDP 3.27 petition is granted. We suspend the respondent’s law license, effective immediately, until the pending Statement of Charges is decided by this Court.”
The chief judge of the Circuit Court of Greenbrier County is directed to appoint a lawyer to serve as the trustee for the respondent’s law practice during the pendency of the suspension.
