Miers Plays Santa Claus to Lefty Lawyers

chimpstein.com, an investigative website ^ | 10/23/2005 | Louis E. Chimpstein

[caryatid]

Understand that IOLTA is not just any lefty scheme. It's particularly deceitful, especially coercive and quite lucrative. "IOLTA is a program, created by state supreme courts or state legislation, whereby lawyers pool client funds--small sums and large sums held for short periods of time--into a designated interest-bearing checking account," writes law professor Charles Rounds, intellectual guru the conservative spirited but ultimately failed assault on IOLTA. "The interest that is generated on those pooled funds is then funneled through a judicially created legal foundation to various "public interest" legal firms."

IOLTA was hatched in Florida in 1981. Some eight years later, Miers and her comrades on the "American BarAssociation Consortium on Legal services and the Public," joined up with Tulane Law School professors to sponsor the very ambitious sounding "National Conference on Access to Justice in the 1990s." No mere cog in the wheel, Miers also labored on a "planning subcommittee" for the New Orleans shin dig in June 1989.

According to the official 1991 ABA report, conference participants discussed a number of "fruitful funding theories" that would provide money to fund better legal services for the poor. These included a "dedicated gross receipts tax on lawyer's professional income" and the enactment of "comprehensive IOLTA programs, now implemented in 22 states, [in] the remaining jurisdictions."

The tax proposal proved controversial. No qualms were recorded, however, about the move for "comprehensive" IOLTA programs. But the idea was certainly ambitious. Comprehensive is ABA speak for mandatory. That makes a certain amount of perverse sense; Totalitarianism is quite "comprehensive."

Now, thanks in part to the ABA which aggressively pushed for "comprehensive" IOLTA programs, lawyers face disbarment if they don't place clients funds in IOLTA accounts, which were once voluntarily. Once mandatory, IOLTA revenues increased dramatically.

This is big bucks.

Nationwide, IOLTA, by one estimate, generates $100 million annually. In Texas, about $3 million currently.

What does all this, especially the subterfuge, say about Miers?

"Anyone who participated in the ABA campaign to make IOLTA 'comprehensive' in all 50 states and the District of Columbia should automatically be disqualified from holding a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court," Rounds tells this reporter, who has written about IOLTA for Insight magazine, the New York Post and the Washington Times. "Comprehensive IOLTA was and is all about compulsion and deceit: Under its auspices a lawyer is compelled to assist the state in taking the property of his or her clients, and may do so without their knowledge and consent. In the post-Kelo era, the last thing we need is another justice who does not take seriously the Fifth Amendment's taking clause, for whom the ends justify the means."

The ABA report is hardly Miers' only link to IOLTA. Her stint as Texas State Bar head is another tie that binds. That professional organizations has an incestuous relationship with the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation which distributes IOLTA money.

The Texas State Bar appoints about half of all members to the TEAF. Darrell Jordan, an outspoken supporter of Miers and former Texas State Bar president, litigated on behalf of the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation all the way to the Supreme Court (IOLTA was subsequently upheld in a related case), these days is quoted in support of Miers' nomination.

The TEAF's website today lists the Texas Bar as one of its partners in "its mission of providing funding for civil legal services to the poor."

That's the stated mission. But what is the reality? In his 1997 "policy analysis" for the libertarian Cato Institute Rounds recounts some of IOLTA's greatest hits in Texas and elsewhere. Just how do these provide legal representation for the "poor." Many of the grants in questions were disbursed around the same time Miers headed the Texas bar.

Here's Rounds--

• A 1992-93 IOLTA grant of $87,000 went to the Massachusetts Advocacy Center, which "has fought court battles against tougher standards for public school administrators and for the abolition of merit-based entrance requirements for the Boston Latin School."

• A $134,000 grant went to the Massachusetts Disability Law Center whose most notorious case involved helping a fired Duxbury fireman regain his job and $20,000 back pay plus 12 percent interest. The town had dismissed the man after he was found not guilty, by reason of insanity, of bludgeoning his wife within an inch of her life.

Texas Rural Legal Aid, an IOLTA grantee, ... in 1996 filed a federal lawsuit challenging the right of military personnel to vote by absentee ballot in Val Verde County, Texas. TRLA alleges that the800 absentee ballots cast by active-duty members of the armed forces unlawfully contributed to the election of Republicans Murray Kachel as county commissioner and D'Wayne Jernigan as sheriff. TRLA charges that counting the absentee ballots violates the Federal Voting Rights Act because the ballots "dilute" the voting strength of Hispanics. . .

It is difficult to determine how many bona fide poverty cases were turned away by IOLTA grantees because they did not have a political component. There is some anecdotal evidence, however, of some curious applicant denials. For example, in 1992 Rose Pucci, a secretary earning $23,000 a year, purchased at a foreclosure sale a rented condominium in the Beacon Hill section of Boston. Her tenant was a well-to-do lawyer at a prestigious downtown law firm. When the attorney-tenant would not leave the premises so that Pucci could move into her new home, she found herself before the Rent Board, which proceeded to take the side of the tenant. The case dragged on. Pucci became homeless and deeply in debt. She sought help from several IOLTA grantee groups but was turned away by all of them. Pucci was told by one group that it would never provide assistance to a "landlord." She was finally rescued by a private attorney who took her case pro bono. The Rose Pucci case suggests that IOLTA is more about poverty politics than about aiding the poor.

In other words, the "politically incorrect" need not apply. Chester Darling, an attorney who is a solo practitioner in Boston, got a taste of what it is like to be on the "incorrect" side of a legal services lawsuit when he agreed to defend the First Amendment rights of a veterans' organization.

After a hastily organized group known as the Irish- American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston applied unsuccessfully to march in a St. Patrick's Day parade organized by the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, the newly organized group sued for admission. Pressed by a number of law firms and organizations closely connected with the IOLTA community, including the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which received IOLTA grants, the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled unanimously for the veterans on First Amendment grounds, stating that Massachusetts could not "require private citizens who organize a parade to include among the marchers a group imparting a message the organizers do not wish to convey."

Darling and the veterans won, but at great personal and financial cost . . .

What's Miers take on all this? In the only one of about 21,800 Miers that listed on news.google.com which links her to IOLTA, Jordan tells Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Max Baker "I don't know of any time in her career that she's opposed a valid, pro-bono program like Legal Services, IOLTA or the clinic approach."

Jordan did not respond to repeated inquiries from this website. Does that make him suddenly gun shy? Or an anti-Simeanite?

Either way he'll probably soon be forced to reveal details of his apparent conversations with Miers about IOLTA.

The great lady herself has much to explain. Why is she so supportive? How does forcing an Irish Catholic parade to include gay marchers help the poor? If she wants to help the poor should IOLTA funds go to conservative public interest law firms that help low-income folks fight government regulations that make it difficult or impossible for them to start their own businesses? Has IOLTA ever made such awards? The lawyer for the parade organizers applied for IOLTA money but was rejected, incidentally. How do the poor benefit from invalidating parental consent laws on abortion? Or military absentee ballots? Would she recuse herself if another IOLTA case came before the Supreme Court?

It's incumbent upon Miers to answer these questions because her fruitful funding endeavor has helped sprout and nourish so many poisoned weeds of liberalism.

[caryatid]

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[caryatid]

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[Cicero]

Yessiree, this is the smoking gun, all right.

And it doesn't just come out of left field, either. It exactly fits the pattern revealed by many of her writings.

[GarySpFc]

What a load of carp. This is simply a trust fund for client awards to keep the attorneys honest. We have the same thing in the insurance business. All monies have to go in the account so there is a record, and all monies going out has to be strictly accounted for. The interest generated on this money is used to benefit various groups by the Texas Bar. There is nothing in the record to show Miers had one thing to do with how this money was used. Indeed, as head of the bar it is highly unlikely she allowed such a conflict of interest.

[SAJ]

Why does not the interest accrued go to the owner of the funds in question? If monies are being held in abeyance pending a resolution of a legal issue, or (effectively) in trust for the same or related reasons, does that somehow -- magically, no doubt -- transfer the ownership of such funds to another party?

If not, then there is no possible excuse for paying interest earned on such funds to the owner of those funds.

Typical lawyers and lawyerisms.

Yet one more reason why Miers is unacceptable. Having anything at all to do with an ongoing theft that is conveniently labelled ''legal'' should rate instant disqualification for any sort of judgeship.

[SAJ]

Please read, ''...for NOT paying interest...''.

Typo, my apologies.

[caryatid]

What a load of carp.

Carp ... ?

[Cicero]

Pardon me, but she certainly knew that this law would FORCE lawyers to pay interest that should have been paid to their clients into a central fund, on threat of disbarment and criminal penalties.

And with all her years of experience among the leftists in the ABA and her keen interest in "public interest" law, she certainly knew what kind of projects the money would be spent on. It was entirely predictable.

She has always been an advocate of "public interest" law, which is basically controlled by leftists.

[GarySpFc]

Yet one more reason why Miers is unacceptable. Having anything at all to do with an ongoing theft that is conveniently labelled ''legal'' should rate instant disqualification for any sort of judgeship.

Your anti-Miers slander is noted. It is not theft, since the monies are deposited, and checks to the clients written shortly thereafter. The interest on any one claim if likely very low, but with tens or hundreds of thousands of deposits the interest adds up. Keeping track of small amounts of interst is really not practical.

[GarySpFc]

I misspelled the word for polite company. :)

[GarySpFc]

Pardon me, but she certainly knew that this law would FORCE lawyers to pay interest that should have been paid to their clients into a central fund, on threat of disbarment and criminal penalties.

Excuse me. May I suggest you reread the article. IOLTA was hatched in Florida in 1981. Where was Miers? Furthermore, it is not the clients money until paid out minus legal fees and expenses. Additionally, Miers did not control where the monies went.

[caryatid]

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[SAJ]

'Practicality' is not my problem, Mr. Situational Ethics, Mr. Relative Morality.

Property is property, ownership is an indivisible term. The interest accrued on assorted funds while lawyers jack the public around in this bizarre 'system' of 'law' absolutely apodeictically belongs to the owner of these temporarily extorted funds.

When 'law' recognises this simple fact again, as it did for -- lo! -- the first 150 or so years of our Republic, then I will remove the apostrophes. Not before.

BTW, counselor, you misused a term, to wit, slander. Slander, at 'law', requires malice as an element. I have no malice toward Miers; may she prosper hugely, may she live her life, go bankrupt tomorrow, win the lottery, contract a mortal disease, whatever...it's all one with me. Good for her, and who cares? Given her behaviour as regards citizens' property in the process described in the article, though, is an absolute disqualifier from any bench, from J.P. up to SCOTUS.

There is no malice whatever, as defined at 'law', in the sentiment above.

Oh, yes, one other abuse on your part. 'Slander' is a civil tort involving spoken language; 'libel' is the equivalent tort involving the written word. Just FYI.

[PackerBoy]

He has a point. Although client's money is most frequently "parked" for a short time, I have an attorney friend whose client lost $100,000+ while a complicated settlement issue regarding a seven figure settlement was worked out and the funds, held in the IOLTA, could not be invested or distributed. This is a taking of client money without due process -- no question about it.

[SAJ]

Rubbish. One did not have to be present at the authorship of the Communist Manifesto in order to be a present-day Communist. One did not have to be present in a Munich beer hall in 1921 (not 1923, look it up) at the founding of the National Socialist Workers' Party in order to be a Nazi.

Nor did Miers have to be present at the founding of IOLTA in order to espouse their peculiar incestuous method of theft.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

Your anti-Miers slander is noted.

The guy actually made some well reasoned points. Slader is it now for saying she's unacceptable, I'm surprised you didn't call it "treason" as you are one of the biggest Miers cheerleaders on FR.

The interest on any one claim if likely very low, but with tens or hundreds of thousands of deposits the interest adds up. Keeping track of small amounts of interst is really not practical.

I can't believe you are going this route...
"See Joanna, its like Superman 3, you just take those fractions of interest that they otherwise drop, and you put them in a bank account."
"Isn't that like stealing?"
"No, see its like pennies at the gas station-"
"For the crippled kids?"
"No no, you know if you need a penny you take it, its just in this case we're going to be going to that tray a couple of thousand times a day..."
"So you are taking money out"
"Yeah"
"That's not your's"
"Right"
"How is that not stealing?"
"Uh, I guess I'm not explaining this very well..."

[GarySpFc]

Mr. Nonsense, the system was set up in Florida in 1981, which was prior to Miers taking charge of the Texas Bar. I agree it should be the clients money, but that is not the way it has been defined by the bar.

Secondly, I do detect malice in many of the anti-Miers posts...maybe not at law, but malice just the same.

A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.

[GarySpFc]

No, you are not.

[GarySpFc]

Nor did Miers have to be present at the founding of IOLTA in order to espouse their peculiar incestuous method of theft.

Do I detect more than a little desperation in your posts?