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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAn Indianapolis attorney who failed to act promptly and misled a client has been suspended from the practice of law in Indiana for six months.
Indianapolis attorney Rock Lee represented “Defendant” in criminal cases in Dearborn County and Ohio. According to a Dec. 4 Indiana Supreme Court order approving statement of circumstances and conditional agreement for discipline, Lee believed that a motion to suppress in the Ohio case would be successful and that suppression of the evidence in the Ohio case also would be beneficial to Defendant in the Dearborn County case.
However, although Lee successfully obtained multiple continuances of the Dearborn County case after representing to the court that he would be filing a suppression motion in the Ohio case, he never filed the motion. Thus, Defendant became frustrated with Lee’s representation and sought to fire him.
The order says that during a hearing on the matter in Dearborn County, Lee admitted he had not filed the motion in Ohio and had misled Defendant in that regard. “Respondent also now acknowledges that the Ohio case was unrelated to the Dearborn County case and that he could have pursued the latter without the need to wait on anything in the Ohio case,” Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for the unanimous Supreme Court.
Justices thus ordered that Lee be suspended from the practice of law for 180 days with automatic reinstatement, effective Jan. 14, 2021. The costs of the proceeding are assessed against him.
According to the order, Lee shall fulfill all the duties of a suspended attorney under Admission and Discipline Rule 23(26). Provided there are no other suspensions in effect when the current suspension expires, Lee will be automatically reinstated to the practice of law, subject to the conditions of Admission and Discipline Rule 23(18)(a).
Lee, of Suhre & Associates LLC in Indianapolis, was admitted to the practice of law in Indiana in 2011. According to the Indiana Roll of Attorneys, he has been the subject of one prior disciplinary action.
The current case is In the Matter of: Rock C. Lee, 20S-DI-322.
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