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The Indiana Supreme Court disciplined two Indianapolis attorneys Thursday, including one who became involved in a heated dispute with a client over a negative online review.
The high court issued a public reprimand to Steven Taylor and suspended Stanley Wruble III from the practice of law for 30 days, with the suspension stayed subject to completion of at least 18 months of probation with Judges & Lawyers Assistance Program monitoring.
According to court records, married clients hired Taylor in January 2017 to file and prosecute a Chapter 13 bankruptcy on their behalf.
Because the clients had not yet filed their 2015 and 2016 federal tax returns, Taylor listed the Internal Revenue Service as a creditor and left the amount owed blank.
The clients later filed their returns, calculating they owed the IRS $2,437 for 2015 taxes.
The bankruptcy court approved the Chapter 13 plan, allowed the IRS $2,437 for its claim, and treated that claim as priority debt.
The clients paid this amount as well as about $400 in interest. In 2020, the bankruptcy court entered an order of discharge and closed the case.
The order of discharge noted, among other things, that taxes “to the extent not paid in full under the plan” were not discharged. At this point, the matter for which Taylor had been retained was complete.
Later, the IRS notified the clients that an audit of their 2015 tax return revealed errors and that the clients owed an additional $3,226.65 in unpaid taxes and interest.
Taylor agreed to represent the clients in an administrative appeal, which was unsuccessful.
He then agreed to file on the clients’ behalf a petition to initiate an adversary proceeding against the IRS to enforce the discharge.
However, Taylor never filed such a petition, and he was largely unresponsive to the clients’ numerous attempts to contact him.
Meanwhile, the IRS retained the clients’ 2022 tax refund to apply against the unpaid 2015 taxes, and the clients paid the remaining balance to the IRS. The parties agree that under federal tax and bankruptcy law, the 2015 taxes owed by the clients likely were nondischargeable and that it is unlikely the clients would have prevailed in an adversary proceeding.
All justices concurred with the order.
In Wruble’s case, the attorney represented a client in a matter in St. Joseph County. The parties reached an agreement, and the case was dismissed after the client fulfilled the conditions of the agreement.
The client later left a one-star review of Wruble’s’s law firm on Google in which the client complained of difficulties communicating with the attorney.
Wruble then made multiple demands, using derogatory and profane language, that the client remove the review.
When the client refused, Wruble posted a public response to the Google review in which he revealed damaging information about the client relating to the subject of the representation.
Wruble revealed similar damaging information in a defamation lawsuit he filed against the client in Marion County.
Justice Geoffrey Slaughter concurred in part and dissented in part with a separate opinion.
Slaughter wrote that he concurred in approving the parties’ agreement that Wruble violated Indiana Rule of Professional Conduct 1.9(c), which bars lawyers from revealing information concerning their representation of a client. He also concurred in the parties’ agreed discipline, which requires Wruble to attend anger-management therapy.
But Slaughter dissented from the parties’ agreement that Wruble should be sanctioned for violating Admission and Discipline Rule 22 (the oath of attorneys) by acting in an offensive manner.
Slaughter noted that, to be clear, his objection was not that the charge lacks factual support, as he described Wruble’s personality during this episode as “indeed offensive.”
“My specific concern is with the ever-present threat that lawyers will face charges for whatever the commission deems an ‘offensive personality’—an inherently subjective assessment that risks a dangerous slippery slope,” Slaughter wrote.
Slaughter added that the better enforcement practice, in his view, is for the Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission to avoid “offensive personality” charges altogether and to ground charges against those deserving of professional sanction (like Wruble) in one or more targeted professional-conduct rules.
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