Fort Lauderdale attorney suspended after posing online as opposing attorney’s client
Much of the six-month suspension Fort Lauderdale attorney Tracy Newmark began serving Sunday comes down to lying, according to the referee’s reports of Newmark’s Florida Bar discipline cases. Lying about:
▪ Who she was when she posted on the attorney review site Avvo about the opposing counsel in a case
▪ What she claimed on Avvo that a judge said about that opposing counsel
▪ To the referee about her lying on Avvo (she eventually admitted it)
▪ By filing a motion for attorney’s fees to which she knew she wasn’t legally entitled
Taking the last part first...
Filing without faith
Newmark told the referee her client in a contentious post-divorce case wanted revenge after his ex-wife filed a domestic violence temporary restraining order against him. The ex-husband thought his ex-wife wasn’t using the legal move protectively, but vindictively, to keep him from his son’s track meet.
The restraining order was dismissed after 20 days over September and October 2011. So, Newmark, who joined the Florida Bar in 1990, filed a motion against the ex-wife for the attorney’s fees from dealing with the restraining order.
The referee’s report states, that Newmark “acknowledged at the time she filed and argued the motion that she was aware there was no provision under Florida Statute section 741.31 nor any other provision she was aware of which allowed attorney’s fees in the circumstances.”
In fact, the report says Newmark admitted during the discipline hearing, she knew she might get “spanked” for filing the motion because it was “a stretch.”
The referee, 15th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge G. Joseph Curley, thought Newmark “didn’t have a reasonable expectation of success” and “didn’t act in good faith.”
Faking it
Oakland Park attorney Kathleen Collins represented the ex-wife. When Collins opposed a continuance, Newmark went on her business Facebook page to call Collins’ actions “extreme,” “outrageous” and “inhumane” and tried to get other attorneys to reject Collins’ future continuance requests.
That falls under, the referee’s report said, “comments designed to humiliate, disparage and embarrass” Collins, the kind of thing that’s frowned upon, TV legal dramas notwithstanding.
But at least Newmark did that under her own name and social media space. When Newmark went to Avvo.com, a sort of Yelp for attorneys’ clients, she donned the mask of being a Collins client.
The referee’s report says she posted she “would not recommend this attorney,” and gave Collins a one-star review (out of five).
“In her client review, [Newmark] cited Ms. Collins ‘inhumane’ behavior in opposing a continuance. She further stated that ‘I would not want a person with no empathy toward an ill minor child to represent my interests in court.’”
Also, she inferred that the judge in their case “had found Ms. Collins behavior and comments were inappropriate” when the judge hadn’t said anything of the sort.
Curley noted that Newmark, in her answer to the Bar complaint, “denied each and every allegation regarding her various social media posts. However, at the final hearing, [Newmark] conceded she made the posts.”
Punitive action
Curley thought Newmark should get a 60-day suspension with one-year probation for the lying. For the other discipline case, in which Curley ruled Newmark didn’t put in proper work or client communication when representing tenants evicted from an apartment with black mold, he recommended a 45-day suspension with a one-year probation for the other discipline case.
The Florida Supreme Court agreed with Curley’s recommendation in the latter case and thought the two punishments should run concurrently.
But the court disagreed with the 60-day suspension recommendation in the former case and suspended Newmark six months.
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