Disciplinary Counsel v. Smigelski

Opinion

PETERS, J.

The principal issue in this appeal from the imposition of disciplinary sanctions on an attorney is whether, having found initially that a contingent fee agreement was neither unlawful nor unethical, the trial court nonetheless properly sanctioned the attorney for having charged an unreasonable fee and for having disbursed the fee to himself in an unreasonable manner. Under the circumstances of this case, in which the attorney improperly calculated the amount that the contingency fee agreement entitled him to collect and improperly collected his fee from assets entrusted to…