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| Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher has ordered a disbarred Connecticut attorney to turn over documents or be taken into custody. Michelle McLoughliln |
A Connecticut attorney who was disbarred in January after accusing a judge of favoring Jewish people could be taken into custody Monday afternoon if she doesn’t provide the court with information about her former clients.
Disbarred Hamden attorney Nickola Cunha was originally scheduled to appear Wednesday at the judicial district courthouse in Middletown to provide the information, according to a memorandum from Judge Thomas Moukawsher.
Court officials said Cunha did not appear in court and had not provided the requested documents as of Thursday afternoon.
Cunha was disbarred on Jan. 25 after she alleged another judge was engaged in a Judaism-based conspiracy and protecting child sexual abuse. In a memorandum for her disbarment, Moukawsher said Cunha engaged in “grave misconduct” while representing a Glastonbury woman in a dissolution of marriage case.After disbarring Cunha, Moukawsher ordered her to turn over her clients’ contact information and a written list of active and pending files to a court-appointed trustee.
“If she hasn’t provided the information sought before this hearing, the court will consider other steps to ensure compliance, including possible additional monetary sanctions, incarceration to secure compliance, or both,” Moukawsher wrote in a memorandum on April 27.
Since Cunha did not appear, nor provide the documents, Moukawsher on Wednesday ordered a capias, which directs law enforcement to take someone into custody and bring them before the court. This would not be a criminal arrest, a court official added.
Moukawsher originally ordered the capias to take effect Thursday afternoon, but postponed it twice. As of Friday afternoon, Cunha has until 3 p.m. Monday to produce relevant documents, according to court documents and officials.
Cunha’s lawyer, Norm Pattis, had previously requested Wednesday’s hearing be held remotely because he had a scheduling conflict that prevented him from attending in person. Moukawsher denied the request and ordered the hearing still take place in-person.
Pattis has not responded to requests for comment this week.
After being disbarred, Cunha was also not allowed to withdraw funds from clients’ accounts nor could she engage in any law-related activities, according to the April memorandum.
“She has not complied,” Moukawsher wrote in the memorandum. “Cunha, through her lawyers, says the court is powerless to do anything about it. Ms. Cunha claims that the moment the court disbarred her it lost jurisdiction over her.”
Less than a week after being disbarred, Cunha withdrew $30,000 from a client’s account, Moukawsher wrote in the memorandum.
Cunha claimed she did not have notice of the court’s order when she took the money. However, the court-appointed trustee, who was ordered to protect Cunha’s clients, said the former Hamden attorney was aware of the order and claimed her clients owed her money, according to Moukawsher.
Moukawsher said Cunha “didn’t say she might have misunderstood” the order.
“Instead, she darted around claiming at one point that she had no idea about the order, at another saying she didn’t remember her conversations, and at another point taking the Fifth Amendment,” the judge said.
“She struck the court as someone trying to avoid the truth, but doing a very bad job of it,” he wrote.
Moukawsher said Cunha was “without a doubt in contempt of the court’s order prohibiting her from taking her client’s money.”
Cunha was questioned during an April 18 hearing about taking the funds. Cunha asked for more time and said she had documents that would prove she had the legal right to take the money, Moukawsher wrote.
During another hearing on April 22, Moukawsher said Cunha did not enter any documents into evidence, and instead gave a “rambling account” of working for the client on various cases. She listed about $6,000 in expenses she incurred on behalf of the client, he said.
Moukawsher ordered an audit of Cunha’s dealing with her clients’ funds in general, as well as the $30,000.
A report of the audit was ordered to be filed with the court by Aug. 1, 2022.
For violating Moukawsher’s order against taking clients’ funds, the court sanctioned Cunha to $1,000.
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