Tudor v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 11 January 1905
• Citation: 84 S.W. 522
• Parties: TUDOR v. COMMONWEALTH.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

84 S.W. 522

TUDOR v. COMMONWEALTH.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

January 11, 1905

Appeal from Circuit Court, Fayette County.

"Not to be officially reported."

S. M Tudor was disbarred from practicing as an attorney at law and appeals. Reversed.

Tobias Gibson and Hobbs & Farmer, for appellant.

N. B Hays, Loraine Mix, John R. Allen, and Samuel M. Wilson, for appellee.

PAYNTER J.

Based upon the affidavit of R. E. Smith, an information was filed against the appellant, S. M. Tudor, for the purpose of disbarring him as an attorney at law. There is really but one charge sufficiently averred against appellant, and that may be stated by a quotation from the finding of the court, which is as follows: "The court finds from the evidence that the defendant, S. M. Tudor, an attorney at law of the bar of Fayette county, has been and is guilty of malpractice as an attorney, and of conduct such as is unbecoming and improper in an attorney at law, and that renders him unworthy and unfit to be or remain an attorney at law, in that, after being employed by one M. A. Pharis to prosecute and to aid in the prosecution of one R. E. Smith upon the charge of obtaining money under false pretenses, as charged in the information, and while he was so employed, and after said prosecution had been instituted, and while same was still pending, the said S. M. Tudor, as the court finds from the evidence, entered into an agreement with said R. E. Smith whereby, in consideration of ten ($10) dollars, agreed to be paid by said Smith to said Tudor, and of which five ($5) dollars was in fact then and there paid to him, said Tudor agreed and undertook to have said criminal proceeding dismissed, and no prosecution had against said Smith." We do not reach the same conclusion that the lower court did on the question of fact. If Tudor was employed by Pharis to represent him in the prosecution, and he accepted money from Smith in consideration that he would dismiss it, he was thereby guilty of malpractice, and should for that reason have been suspended from practicing, or disbarred, as the court thought proper under all the facts of the case. The charge, if at all, must have been sustained by the testimony of R. E. Smith, who confesses his own shame and wrongdoing in an effort to gratify his ill will toward the appellant; not to conserve the morals of the community, or to uplift the legal profession. Tudor says that Smith owed him a...