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.
