A well-known local lawyer faces possible disbarment for "chilling" threats and perjury that led to a mother temporarily losing custody of her child, according to a recommendation from Tennessee's lawyer accountability board.
Nashville attorney Brian Manookian's law license could be on the line based on new findings by the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility.
A 48-page report filed Wednesday by a three-person hearing panel from the board outlines what it says are a series of ethical violations. The Tennessean obtained a copy of the report.
Manookian has denied wrongdoing. He argues that the incidents reported by the panel have no bearing on his work as a lawyer and do not fall under the board's purview.
The panel's recommendation does not mean an immediate disbarment. Orders like this don’t take effect until approved by the Tennessee Supreme Court following the conclusion of appellate review.
"I'm confident it won’t hold up, I look forward to putting this before a real judge," Manookian told The Tennessean on Sunday. "But it's not a win for me, because the process keeps me out of the game. The process takes so long."
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| Nashville attorney Brian Manookian |
Manookian has been at the center of several judicial issues. He filed complaints that led to disciplinary action against two judges for a trip they took with disgraced former Judge Casey Moreland, and he's tussled with Nashville's top prosecutor over leaks to the media.
He represented the family of a Waffle House shooting victim in a 2019 lawsuit against Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the family of man who sued the hospital after doctors mistakenly implanted a medical device in the wrong kidney in 2017.
He also has represented the family of an Independence High School student fatally killed by a driver while riding a bike in Williamson County in 2018.
But Manookian has previously been suspended twice after the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility, a panel that disciplines lawyers, said he had violated ethics rules.
In 2018, he was suspended until being reinstated in May 2019 after suing the board in federal court.
The Tennessee Supreme Court in October 2019 again suspended Manookian, citing evidence collected by the board of what it termed threatening emails. That temporary suspension remained in effect Sunday.
At that time, the state's high court said Manookian had "improperly communicated" with an opposing lawyer's client "by sending the client an email designed to intimidate the client."
'The recorded conversation is terrifying'
In the lengthy report filed last week, the board found Manookian has continued to make threats to clients and others, as well as perjured himself during court proceedings.
"Despite multiple charges and multiple opportunities to change directions, Mr. Manookian has displayed a custom and habit of threatening opposing counsel and third parties for no reasonably legitimate purpose other than to intimidate them," the three-person panel found.
Each of three independent actions around his interactions with a Nashville woman would have been grounds for disbarment, the board found.
Manookian rented a residential property from a family and left it in a condition that led the landlords' daughter, the property manager, to "understandably believe" it had been abandoned, the panel found.
She went to check on the property and found the utilities shut off and "maggots in the refrigerator, spoiled meat in the freezer, toilets were stained, bathtubs were moldy and air filters were filthy," according to the board. The rent had not been paid for months.
She cleaned out the space and put some of the items he had left behind in storage at her home to get it ready for new tenants, the report said. Weeks went by before she reported Manookian contacted her about his property.
She was out of town at the time, but told him as soon as she was back, she would return his items, according to the report.
The woman had recorded a follow-up call from Manookian, and a transcript included in the report details the profanity-laden diatribe from the attorney.
"In response, Mr. Manookian countered with a bevy of serious and chilling threats," the report found. "The panel finds that the recorded conversation is terrifying."
Around the time of the call, the woman was involved in a serious custody battle against her ex-husband and had asked the court to suspend the man's parenting time, according to the panel's report.
Manookian, in the call, threatens the woman repeatedly, telling her "you'll never seen your child again."
"When we get off the phone, you start looking behind you because the race is on," Manookian said in the phone call, according to the report. "I'm gonna figure out who your dad is, what hospital he's in. You know what I do for a living? I sue hospitals. I'll figure out who your dad is. I'll figure out where you are. ... Your mom's gonna go to jail too. You're never gonna see your kid again."
He remembers the interaction differently.
"She broke into my house and stole a number of things," he said Sunday. "No one inflicted any violence, there was no attempt to do anything extra-judiciously."
He filed both a criminal complaint and civil lawsuit against the woman, but dropped the charges after she returned his possessions, he said. As a result of her interactions with Manookian, she temporarily lost custody of the child for three weeks in December 2018, including over the Christmas holiday, according to the report.
"This isn't an issue for a licensing board," Manookian said. "None of that had anything to do with me being an attorney, It had to do with me being the victim of a crime. They didn't like it because I called her and screamed at her and told her to bring my stuff back, which I absolutely did."
Manookian was subpoenaed as part of the ongoing custody negotiations, he said. He said he told the court at the start of his testimony that while his memory is fallible, they should refer to the recording to document his statements.
While under oath, he denied when asked if he told the woman he would make sure she never saw her child again, contradicting the recorded comments.
"I got one question wrong," he said. "That's not intentional perjury."
Lawyer argues his comments protected speech
Manookian has regularly argued that his comments toward other attorneys and third parties may be "offensive," but they are protected speech — or at least not the board's business.
"Mr. Manookian has never acknowledged that his conduct in this matter was unethical, and in fact, he asserts that the Tennessee Supreme Court cannot sanction him for his conduct in this disciplinary action," the panel wrote.
The panel's lengthy report touches on issues with a case in Williamson County and interactions with employees of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but found the custody case to be sufficient to support their recommendation.
The board did not respond to a request for comment left Friday.
Manookian sued the Board of Professional Responsibility in federal court in 2019, saying the board's discipline broke federal law and violated his right to free speech. The suit framed the suspension in part as an attempt to punish Manookian for pursuing a complaint against a Williamson County judge.
His claims in the suit
were dismissed or stayed in 2020 and Manookian's
subsequent appeal was denied as untimely, according to federal court
records accessed Sunday.
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