In re Quimby
| Decision Date | 30 March 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 19335.,19335. |
| Citation | 359 F.2d 257,123 US App. DC 273 |
| Parties | In the Matter of Charles H. QUIMBY, III. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Mr. Roger Robb, Washington, D. C., for Committee on Admissions and Grievances.
Before PRETTYMAN, Senior Circuit Judge, and BURGER and WRIGHT, Circuit Judges.
Appellant is an attorney who was disbarred by the District Court for misappropriating funds from estates of two incompetent war veterans for whom he was the duly appointed Committee. He appeals, asserting that disbarment was too severe under all the circumstances.
The record discloses that Appellant, who has been a practicing attorney for almost forty years, had become financially embarrassed because an investment in an automobile dealership had proven unsound. In order to ease the resulting pressures, he drew eight thousand dollars from a savings account maintained by him in one incompetent's estate with total assets of about nineteen thousand dollars; he also withdrew ten thousand dollars from Committeeship accounts belonging to another incompetent's estate, which had total assets of about twenty-six thousand dollars. In each instance, Appellant used for his own purposes funds thus improperly withdrawn from trust accounts. Subsequently, after the Court Auditor's investigations revealed this defalcation, he returned all the withdrawn money with interest. Appellant testified that he "was under terrific mental pressure at the time." At no time did he falsify any reports or records of the trust estates, although he did delay in filing the final account for one of the estates.
Appellant's argument is that disbarment was improper because he intended at all times to replace the money he had taken, and hence there was no evidence that he intended to defraud his clients or to deprive them of the funds permanently. He cites cases and other authorities to the effect that the purpose of disbarment is not to punish an attorney who has erred but to protect the public from one who has proven himself unfit or unreliable, and he points to his long and otherwise unstained record before the bar to show in effect that this misappropriation was an isolated aberration not likely to be repeated. However we are bound to note that the facts admitted by Appellant are sufficient to constitute the crime of embezzlement as defined in D.C.Code §...
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