Here, there's an underlying family dispute between two sisters involving their 86-year old father, who's been declared incompetent. One of the sisters is primarily taking care of him, and is the trustee of his trust, and while she's away, the other sister shows up, brings an attorney, and the attorney meets privately with the 86-year old and has him sign a retainer agreement for $100,000. The attorney then demands to get paid for her services.
There are substantial additional factual details in the Court of Appeal's opinion, but suffice it to say, both the trial court and the Court of Appeal appear to be extremely unhappy with the lawyer's conduct. The trial court finds that the lawyer committed elder abuse and enters a restraining order against her, and the Court of Appeal affirms -- in an opinion the tone of which is often quite bristling.
As I said, if you're an attorney, you want to help out a client if you can. Especially, I suspect, if he's willing to pay you six figures to do so.
But I might think twice about embarking on that path under the situation that existed here. Even if I had gotten the father's signature of the retainer agreement, it was probably unwise to insist upon being paid. One might also have wanted to simply walk away from the thing once the trustee sister asserted a claim for elder abuse and asked for a restraining order. Finally, once the trial court issued one, with a neutral person finding that you've engaged in elder abuse as an attorney, I might have thought twice -- perhaps even three or four times -- about filing an appeal that might result, as here, in a published opinion with your name on it that affirms that finding.
