Attorney Grievance Comm'n of Md. v. Maiden
| Docket Number | Misc. Docket AG No. 72, Sept. Term, 2020 |
| Decision Date | 28 July 2022 |
| Citation | 480 Md. 1,279 A.3d 940 |
| Parties | ATTORNEY GRIEVANCE COMMISSION OF MARYLAND v. Amber Lisa MAIDEN |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Argued by Jessica B. McCully, Senior Asst. Bar Counsel (Lydia E. Lawless, Bar Counsel, Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland), for Petitioner.
No argument on behalf of the Respondent.
Submitted to: Fader, C.J., Watts, Hotten, Booth, Biran, Gould, Eaves, JJ.
The Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland (the "Commission"), acting through Bar Counsel, filed a Petition for Disciplinary or Remedial Action against Amber Lisa Maiden, arising out of her representation of Brian Riese. The Commission alleged that Ms. Maiden committed several violations of the Maryland Attorneys’ Rules of Professional Conduct ("MARPC") resulting from her: (1) creation of, failure to recognize, and failure to terminate representation due to a conflict of interest that arose when she made herself a co-party to Mr. Riese's administrative appeal of the dismissal of a discrimination complaint and asserted a 50% share of any punitive damages award; (2) sending Mr. Riese a 20-page letter containing numerous antisemitic, personally insulting, profane, and otherwise inappropriate comments; and (3) false claim to Bar Counsel that she had sent the letter by mistake. The Commission asserted that Ms. Maiden's conduct violated MARPC 19-301.1 (Competence) (Rule 1.1), 19-301.7 (Conflict of Interest — General Rule) (Rule 1.7), 19-301.8 (Conflict of Interest; Current Clients; Specific Rules) (Rule 1.8), 19-301.16 (Declining or Terminating Representation) (Rule 1.16), 19-308.1 (Bar Admission and Disciplinary Matters) (Rule 8.1), and 19-308.4 (Misconduct) (Rule 8.4).1
A hearing judge found by clear and convincing evidence that Ms. Maiden had committed all the violations alleged by the Commission. The hearing judge also found the existence of several aggravating and two mitigating factors. Neither party filed exceptions. The Commission recommended a sanction of indefinite suspension, which we imposed by per curiam order following oral argument, which Ms. Maiden did not attend. Attorney Grievance Comm'n v. Maiden , 478 Md. 527, 528, 275 A.3d 354 (2022). We now explain the reasons for our order.
This Court may accept a hearing judge's findings as established when no exceptions are filed. See Attorney Grievance Comm'n v. Silbiger , 478 Md. 607, 617, 276 A.3d 53, Misc. Docket AG No. 57, Sept. Term, 2020, (filed May 26, 2022); see also Md. Rule 19-740(b)(2)(A). Here, because no exceptions were filed, we treat as established the following facts, which the hearing judge found to have been proved by clear and convincing evidence.
Mr. Riese, a former security technical specialist with the United States Department of State, filed an Equal Opportunity complaint against the State Department after he was removed from his post in 2018. Mr. Riese contended that he had been discriminated against on the basis of his gender. The State Department dismissed his complaint.
In September 2019, Mr. Riese retained Ms. Maiden to represent him in filing an appeal of the dismissal to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). The retainer agreement provided for a flat fee of $1,500 for the written appeal and contemplated a need "to renegotiate a new fee schedule" if Ms. Maiden were to provide "any additional legal services or representation."
After entering her appearance, Ms. Maiden made multiple requests to the State Department for records in connection with her preparation of Mr. Riese's appeal. She claimed that the State Department failed to provide the requested documentation or provided it "in pieces" or "in a very jumbled kind of way."
Three days before the deadline for filing Mr. Riese's appeal, Ms. Maiden and Mr. Riese engaged in an email discussion that addressed, among other things, Mr. Riese's damages claim. Ms. Maiden told Mr. Riese that the EEOC generally had limited authority to award damages, but that 42 U.S.C. § 1981 operated as a "loophole." Ms. Maiden stated that she had "never quite understood Section 1981 as it simply does not apply to most EEO cases," but informed Mr. Riese that it did apply to his case. She asked him to "read up on Section 1981, and brainstorm on how to get your damages out of it."
The following day, Mr. Riese responded that § 1981 appeared to him to be limited to claims of racial discrimination and asked whether Ms. Maiden, who is Black, could "join the cases." Ms. Maiden agreed, opining that they could argue that "in this case, [Ms. Maiden's] rights are tied to [Mr. Riese's] rights," "both o[f their] constitutional rights ha[d] been violated" by the State Department's responses to her records requests, and "the door ha[d] been opened to a [§] 1981 claim" based on Ms. Maiden's race. She advised that such a § 1981 claim was "the only way to get at punitive [damages]," and concluded that they should "go for it" and request ten million dollars in damages. Ms. Maiden later suggested raising the damages demand to $20 million.
Contemporaneously, as part of a series of text messages, Ms. Maiden sent Mr. Riese the following:
I hope it goes without saying (and I do this with all my punitive damage clients) I expect you to split any punitive damages with me 50/50 -usually I ask for 35%-but you literally would not be able to make this argument without me, so that's why I'm asking for 50% of the punitive.
Included later in the same chain of texts is the following message from Mr. Riese: It is unclear whether Mr. Riese's statement about being "onboard" referred only to the size of the damages request or to Ms. Maiden's proposed split of any punitive damages award.
On October 29, 2019, Ms. Maiden filed the brief. Two days later, Ms. Maiden forwarded Mr. Riese a new retainer agreement, which reflected what she believed to be their new financial arrangement for her continued representation. Mr. Riese did not sign the new agreement.
On November 6, 2019, during their only in-person meeting, Ms. Maiden and Mr. Riese discussed Ms. Maiden's claim to a 50% share of any punitive damages award. At the hearing in this matter, the parties presented divergent recollections of the meeting. Mr. Riese recalled that the parties "came to a tentative agreement" concerning Ms. Maiden's share of any punitive damages award, which he identified as "significantly less than [ ] 50%." He believed that Ms. Maiden was going to continue representing him, left her with case-related documents, and awaited a new retainer agreement.
Ms. Maiden, by contrast, recalled a "very traumatic" meeting in which Mr. Riese "did all of the talking," was "very aggressive," and "meant to be threatening and intimidating." She testified that the parties never came to any agreement concerning her representation. The hearing judge credited Ms. Maiden's account of the meeting, found that Mr. Riese's behavior was "aggressive, threatening and intimidating," and found that Ms. Maiden "felt demeaned and insulted as a result of Mr. Riese's comments."
On December 2, Ms. Maiden sent Mr. Riese an email telling him that she would not represent him without a contract and that she would send him a new one, which he could "choose to sign ... or not," "a[ ]long with an explanation as to why [she had] articulated the terms of this contract as such." Mr. Riese responded that he would be reluctant to sign a new contract that deviated from what he understood was their verbal agreement. Ms. Maiden replied that she was amenable to renegotiating "the terms of the initial agreement," but felt she was "being ambushed or otherwise disrespected." She accused Mr. Riese of mistaking her "for someone far less intelligent," which she said was "almost always the case when dealing with white Americans." Later that afternoon, Mr. Riese wrote back that he took "great offense" to Ms. Maiden's accusation that he would hold her "in less regard based on [her] race," and asked her to return case-related documents if she wished to end their attorney-client relationship.
Ms. Maiden responded about nine hours later with an email to which she attached an encrypted, 20-page letter addressed to Mr. Riese. She included the password needed to access the letter in the body of the email. The letter purports to be an effort to explain to Mr. Riese how and why his conduct at their in-person meeting and refusal to renegotiate the financial terms of their relationship had offended Ms. Maiden. It does so, however, using language that is antisemitic, personally insulting, profane, and otherwise inappropriate, including the following excerpts, among others:
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