Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Screwing Your Client's Wife Is Not a Breach of Fiduciary Duty in Ol' Miss!

This story was at the ABAJournal.com over the weekend and it's pretty obnoxious. 

Yeah, that's right in an opinion by the Mississippi Supreme Court, a "Super" lawyer, William N. Reed (pic, a very prominent and and connected law partner) who had an affair with his client's wife has been deemed not to have violated fiduciary duty to his client.

A fiduciary duty is a legal or ethical relationship of confidence or trust between a professional and a client.  Screwing your client's wife is not a deviation from that duty in Mississippi.  Are you kidding?   This is such an offensive decision, the lawyer involved really deserves a smack.  Decisions like this are very upsetting for me because it goes to the very heart of the trust relationship between a professional and his or her client.  That our law don't deal harshly at least on a licensure basis with these breaches is just wrong.  In the Mississippi case we are dealing with civil liability and this decision is wrong in my opinion, but the decision does turn on the interpretation of Mississippi's law.  Frankly, I'm guessing that the decision relates to a "legal" argument advanced by the lawyer's malpractice insurance carrier.

2 comments:

  1. Baddest
    I know you represented that lady who had the affair with the psychiatrist. Did you see the ABAJournal has the story about the man sing the wifes bf for givng him herpes?

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  2. It seems to me an absolute rule that a professional maintains boundaries with clients. I am sure there are situations where one's soul mate arrives in the form or a client, or colleague or someother inconvenient package--there are ethical ways to mutually address those scenarios. But this sort of thing is "self-seeking," not professional and not love. Selfishness pure and simple, oh and malpractice.

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