In re Petition of Morrison

• Decision Date: 30 January 1922
• Docket Number: 4359
• Citation: 45 S.D. 123,186 N.W. 556
• Parties: IN RE PETITION OF PATRICK C. MORRISON.
• Court: South Dakota Supreme Court

45 S.D. 123

186 N.W. 556

IN RE PETITION OF PATRICK C. MORRISON. South Dakota Supreme Court Original proceeding #4359--Petition denied. Stephens & McNamee, Martens & Goldsmith Attorneys for Petitioner. Opinion filed January 30, 1922

WHITING, J.

The license to practice law which had theretofore been issued to Patrick C. Morrison was canceled in July, 1920. Our opinion in the disbarment proceeding will be found reported in Re Morrison, 178 N.W. 732. Mr. Morrison has filed a petition seeking to be reinstated as a member of the bar of this state.

When an applicant seeks admission to the bar, and the court or other examining body is called upon to determine his moral fitness for the high position to which he aspires, he is entitled to the benefit of the presumption that he is morally fitted for such position; and but little evidence is required in support of such presumption. When, after having been so admitted, it is charged that he is unfit to continue to exercise the power vested in him as an attorney, the court should guard his every right and see to it that he be not deprived of an opportunity to follow his chosen profession—in preparation for which he may have given years of effort—except upon clear proof of more than trivial abuses of the confidence that has been reposed in him. But when, after full and fair trial, he stands convicted of such wrongdoing as demonstrates his unfitness to act as an officer in courts of justice, and his license as such has been revoked, if he petitions for reinstatement, the burden is upon him to establish by satisfactory evidence, either that the court erred in its judgment of disbarment, or that he has undergone such moral change as to render him a fit person to enjoy the trust and confidence once forfeited. A court should be slow to disbar, but it should be even slower to reinstate; it should endeavor to make certain that it does not again put into the hands of an unworthy petitioner that almost unlimited opportunity to inflict wrongs upon society possessed by a practicing lawyer. It therefore becomes the duty of the court, upon a petition for reinstatement of one who has been disbarred, to seek, not merely through hearings in court, but through every legitimate channel open to it, such information as it may obtain touching upon the then moral fitness of the petitioner to be admitted to practice his chosen profession. Such an investigation we have endeavored to make in the present case.

Petitioner sought admission to the bar of this state in the spring of 1910. He was examined early in April, and received markings entitling him to admission; but, before a certificate was issued, our attention was called to the fact that he stood charged in a federal court with subornation of perjury. It appears that, upon a trial of such charge, the jury disagreed and the charge was thereafter dismissed. Of this fact we were advised in May. Because of the above and other matters called to our attention, we were led to delay issuing a certificate to petitioner; and it was not until December, 1910, that we did issue same. Soon after his admission to practice law, rumors of unprofessional conduct on the part of petitioner commenced to reach the members of this court; these rumors grew more frequent as time passed until is was no surprise when, in March, 1918, charges were filed and his disbarment sought. Petitioner, both in his petition for reinstatement and when he appeared before this court upon same, conceded the correctness of the court's findings and the justness of its order in the disbarment proceedings. Since such proceedings, much information has reached us bearing upon unprofessional conduct of petitioner other than that presented in the charges that were filed. Petitioner himself says that, because of the exigencies which confronted him in early life, he "had become combative and determined, and that in his intense desire to succeed professionally and financially, for the sake of his family and himself, he entered into the competition and strife of his profession to such an extent that he lost sight of those ethical rules and standards which he should have heeded." During the investigation since the filing of the petition for reinstatement, we have been reliably advised that, before his admission to practice by this court, petitioner had appeared in the federal court for persons charged with illegal sales of liquor; that it was in connection with such a case that the charge against him, above referred to, arose; and that such charge was finally dismissed, without a second trial, because of the fact that petitioner was a young man, and because of assurances that petitioner would so conduct himself in the future as to prove himself worthy of leniency. From all the information received, we are convinced that, while petitioner is a man of more than ordinary ability, one who, within a short time after his admission to practice law, fought—and we use this term advisedly—his way, not only to a prominent place in his profession, but to leadership in political and business activities in the community where he lived—yet that, in every walk of life, he had acted upon the theory that might makes right, and that the end he sought justified whatever means were necessary for its accomplishment. We make the above statement only after a most careful consideration of all matters that have come to our attention both upon and after the disbarment proceedings. That his errors were, at first, largely due to the ardor of youth is undoubtedly true; perhaps if he had been associated with some older person to whom he could, if he would, have gone for advice, his whole after life might have been different.

Petitioner comes into court and most humbly states in his petition:

"Your petitioner realizes fully that he is of an age at which it would be possible for him to engage in other pursuits, which might be more lucrative than the practice of law, but submits to your honors that his consciousness of wrong-doing, his humiliation and suffering are his sole and only motives in making this application for restoration, to the end that he may undo that which he has done in the past and may follow out with self-respect that profession which was chosen by him in youth as the highest profession, and which he thereafter through his error and wrongdoing brought into disrepute, and in the belief that your honors may feel that in his present spirit he is...