Selling v. Radford
Headline: Treats state disbarment as a basis to remove a lawyer from the Supreme Court Bar, while allowing exceptions for lack of notice, weak proof, or other grave reasons and giving the lawyer time to respond.
Holding: The Court held it may treat a state supreme court’s disbarment finding as destroying a lawyer’s fair private and professional character for this Court’s Bar, unless lack of notice, weak proof, or other grave reasons exist.
- Allows a state disbarment finding to be used to remove a lawyer from this Court’s Bar.
- Requires courts to consider lack of notice, weak proof, or other grave reasons before removal.
- Gives a lawyer thirty days to file the state record and a brief.
Summary
Background
George W. Radford was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1876 and to the Supreme Court’s Bar in 1886 after representatives said he had been a member of Michigan’s highest court bar and had fair private and professional character. A committee of the Detroit Bar Association, represented by the Solicitor General, asked the Court to strike Radford from the roll because a Michigan trial court disbarred him and the Michigan Supreme Court approved that disbarment (reported at 168 Michigan 474). The petition said Radford kept holding himself out as a practicing lawyer in Detroit by relying on his Supreme Court Bar membership. Radford answered and filed a brief.
Reasoning
The Court explained it cannot re-examine or reverse the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision as a reviewing court, and it also noted that state judgment is not automatically binding on this Court. Still, the Court said the state court’s finding that Radford lacked fair private and professional character ordinarily destroys the right to remain in this Court’s Bar. The Court set limits: it will accept the state judgment’s effect unless the state proceeding lacked notice or an opportunity to be heard, the proof was so weak that the Court could not accept the result, or some other grave reason exists. The opinion confined this rule to the present case and cited Ex parte Tillinghast as distinguishable.
Real world impact
The decision means a state supreme court’s disbarment can be given effect in the Supreme Court’s Bar discipline, but only after the Court checks for serious procedural or proof problems. The Court gave Radford thirty days to file the state record and a printed brief to point out any such grounds; no final removal was ordered yet.
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