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After more than three years of legal wrangling,
attorneys for the city of Springfield have finally found an issue on which
they see eye to eye with Courtney Cox, the Benton lawyer who has filed a
fistful of race-discrimination lawsuits on behalf of several former city
employees: They don’t want letters of admonishment from the Illinois
Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission made public. “Are you going to file those on the public
system?” Cox asked U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott during a hearing
on Tuesday morning. “Aren’t those confidential to the
parties?” city attorney Frank Martinez asked. Scott said no, adding that the letters helped explain
why she had been forced in January to declare a mistrial in the case
popularly known as Black Guardians versus the city of Springfield. The BGA was a cultural organization for
African-American police officers, but by the time the group’s 2003
lawsuit reached trial, six of the original nine plaintiffs had been
dismissed and the marquee plaintiff, Renatta Frazier, had settled out of
court for about $650,000. The long-awaited tribunal on allegations of racism in
the police department came to an abrupt halt on the third day, when Scott
declared that attorneys on both sides had created an “ethical
minefield” [see Dusty Rhodes, “Bit by bit,” Feb. 1]. The problem arose when Cox called as a witness the
Springfield Police Department’s highest-ranking black officer, Deputy
Chief Rob Williams. Williams had originally been a plaintiff in the case
but was dismissed early on because he had failed to state specific claims.
When the trial began, Cox was still technically Williams’ attorney,
though Williams no longer considered him such. This unresolved relationship
presented a legal quandary when Cox repeatedly challenged Williams on small
differences between his trial testimony and his July 2005 deposition. After declaring a mistrial, Scott sent a transcript
of the proceedings to the ARDC for possible disciplinary action. At a
status hearing on the case held on Tuesday, Scott announced that the
ARDC’s Inquiry Board had declined to sanction either attorney,
instead requesting that they both be admonished. The letters, signed by ARDC counsel Deborah Barnes,
state that both Cox and Lang failed to “handle this case competently
at this point in the proceedings,” admonishing Lang for
“failing to determine the status of Mr. Williams’
attorney/client relationship with Mr. Cox” and Cox for his
“inattention to the status of his relationship” with Williams. The panel noted that either attorney could easily
have avoided the problem — Lang by making a “phone call to Mr.
Cox to discuss the issue,” Cox by following “basic . . . trial
preparation” by discussing testimony with his client. The letters end
with duplicate paragraphs reminding Cox and Lang that competent
representation requires “the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and
preparation necessary for the representation, according to Illinois Rule of
Professional Conduct 1.1(a).”
Scott gave both parties until Aug. 1 to deliver
written statements indicating a desire to proceed with the case using these
attorneys. If she gets those assurances, a new trial will begin on Jan. 3,
2008.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2007.
