During a daylong session, the state’s Commission on Practice heard evidence in two cases against Solomon Neuhardt, a personal injury lawyer, including testimony from state District Judge Gregory Todd of Billings.
Todd said as a judge, he had never filed an ethics complaint against an attorney until filing one last year against Neuhardt. The judge said he presided over a case in which Neuhardt represented a woman charged with felony criminal endangerment and drunken driving. The client had crashed her vehicle into a house in August 2012. The woman eventually pleaded guilty and was given a three-year deferred sentence.
Neuhardt was “making impossible legal arguments” in the case and refused to understand the law, the judge said.
“Some of it was the attitude and arrogance that Mr. Neuhardt declared in spite of weak or nonexistent legal arguments,” Todd said.
“I think Mr. Neuhardt was bilking his client,” the judge told the panel.
Attorneys for the state’s Office of Disciplinary Council, who investigated the two complaints against Neuhardt, recommended that Neuhardt be suspended for one year in the complaint filed by Todd and that he be disbarred in a second case. The second complaint alleged that Neuhardt mishandled money in two personal injury cases.
“Mr. Neuhardt has had a disgraceful legal career. Mr. Neuhardt should be disbarred,” Shaun Thompson, chief disciplinary counsel for the ODC, told the panel in the personal injury case.
Neuhardt, who represented himself, offered no defense in either case. He called no witnesses and gave no closing statements. However, he questioned some of ODC’s witnesses.
Neuhardt had no comment about the proceedings but said he has “other opportunities.”
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Commission hears testimony, including from judge, on 2 complaints against Billings lawyer
There must be more to this story.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking so too, Thelma. This guy could be a trouble maker or he may be an attorney who is standing up and doing the right thing.
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