Kentucky Bar Ass'n v. Signer

• Decision Date: 20 February 1976
• Citation: 533 S.W.2d 534
• Parties: KENTUCKY BAR ASSOCIATION, Complainant, v. Burton R. SIGNER, Respondent.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

Page 534

533 S.W.2d 534

KENTUCKY BAR ASSOCIATION, Complainant, v. Burton R. SIGNER, Respondent.

Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Feb. 20, 1976.

Leslie G. Whitmer, Counsel, Kentucky Bar Ass'n, Frankfort, for complainant.

Frank A. Logan, Louisville, for respondent.

PER CURIAM.

The respondent, Burton R. Signer, was admitted to the Ohio bar on April 23, 1958. On or about March 2, 1966, after having practiced in Ohio for more than five years, he applied for admission to the Kentucky bar without examination. Upon receipt of a favorable report on his moral and professional character by the National Conference of Bar Examiners he was admitted to the Kentucky bar on July 22, 1966.

Meanwhile, during 1965 Signer had conducted certain business dealings in Ohio that eventuated in his disbarment by the Supreme Court of Ohio on July 28, 1972. See Cincinnati Bar Association v. Signer, 30 Ohio St.2d 303, 285 N.E.2d 10 (1972). The Ohio disciplinary proceeding was initiated in October of 1971 and did not come to the attention of the Kentucky Bar Association until some time in 1973. On January 9, 1974, the Kentucky Bar Association instituted this disciplinary proceeding based solely on the Ohio disbarment.

The trial committee conducted a hearing of the charge and concluded that under In re Clay, Ky., 261 S.W.2d 301 (1953), the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution (Article 4, § 1) requires Signer to be disbarred or suspended in Kentucky so long as the Ohio disbarment continues in full force and effect. The bar association's board of governors concurred, and so recommends to this court.

The action of the Supreme Court of Ohio in barring Signer from the practice of law in Ohio did not purport to effect his right to practice law in any other state, and could not validly have done so anyway. The Full Faith and Credit Clause cannot possibly be twisted into giving to the Ohio action an effect it did not purport to have. The Ohio court ruled that Signer cannot practice in Ohio. The fundamental requirement of full faith and credit is merely that every other state recognize that he cannot practice in Ohio, and of course we recognize that.

It is conceivable, for example, that under the prevailing standards of one state a lawyer could be disbarred for expectorating on a public sidewalk, whereas in another the rigors of professional discipline might be somewhat less severe. What might suffice to justify disbarment in Ohio might not suffice here. Unlike a marital status, for example, which involves the same two people wherever they may be, the right to practice law does not involve the same two parties from state to state. It involves the individual person on the one hand and the individual state in which he claims the right to practice on the other. The status existing between the two cannot, of itself, determine the status of the same individual person and another state.

The bar association's logic would require that if the man had been convicted of a felony in Ohio and sentenced to five years in the penitentiary, full faith and credit would require him to be convicted and sentenced here as well. The dog simply will not hunt.

In re Clay, Ky., 261 S.W.2d 301 (1953), is unsound and is overruled.

The bar association takes the position also that because Signer was admitted to practice in Kentucky on the basis of his admission and five years of practice in Ohio, disbarment there should call for disbarment here. This too we find to be a novel theory indeed. In effect, it would mean that his admission to practice in...