Lawyer receives 91-day suspension for coaching witness

Our readers are HR professionals, lawyers, and business owners/execs. Lawyers have certain ethical rules by which they must abide. Failure to do so can lead to dire consequences, as a workers’ compensation lawyer for a company was explicitly told by the Florida Supreme Court when it slapped a 91-day suspension on him. In other words, he can’t make a living for a full three months. (Texas would likely agree with the Florida court’s ruling.)

But I was just trying to help!

Here is the cast of characters in our small morality drama: Derek Vashon James, the lawyer for an employer in a workers’ comp lawsuit; Renee Gray, the adjuster who worked for the employer; and Toni Villaverde, the lawyer for the injured employee. Villaverde was deposing the adjuster. James was defending the deposition. Each was in a different physical location. The court reporter wasn’t transcribing the deposition via a transcription machine. So far, so good. Until . . .

Villaverde heard “tap, tap, tap.” Alarmed, she asked, “Are you two texting one another?” A red-handed James said, “Oh, heavens no! I was texting with my daughter.” Villaverde asked him to cut it out. Well, James wasn’t telling the truth. He was texting the witness, she was texting him back, and it wasn’t about whether they should meet up for lunch. Here’s a sampling of what James told the witness before getting caught: