The state Board of Bar Overseers has recommended that the Supreme Judicial Court disbar two lawyers accused of using extortion and intimidation in an attempt to discredit a judge, who had ruled against their client in a family feud over assets of the Demoulas Supermarkets chain. The board recommended the suspension of a third lawyer.
In its decision, the board affirmed the May 2005 recommendation of a hearing officer that Gary C. Crossen and Kevin P. Curry be disbarred, but it softened the penalty recommended for Richard K. Donahue , another lawyer accused in the case, from disbarment to a three-year suspension because Donahue was the last to join in the scheme aimed at a law clerk and because he participated in the planning but not the execution of the effort. . . .
[D]onahue is a former chairman of the Board of Bar Overseers, a former assistant to President Kennedy, and a onetime president of Nike Inc. Curry is a former state prosecutor. Crossen is a former federal and Suffolk County prosecutor, former chairman of the state Judicial Nominating Commission, and former ethics counsel to Governors William F. Weld and Paul Cellucci. . . .
[T]he disciplinary case against the three lawyers stems from actions they allegedly took in 1997, two years after Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Maria Lopez ruled that the heirs of George Demoulas, a cofounder of the $1.5 billion chain, had been cheated out of millions of dollars by other members of their family. Lopez ordered a massive transfer of assets.The lawyers, who all worked at various times for the losing side in the case, engaged in an elaborate scheme to get information from Lopez's law clerk, Paul Walsh , to provide information that would allow them to discredit Lopez and invalidate the judgment, hearing officer M. Ellen Carpenter wrote in her May report.
The men first enticed Walsh with a bogus offer of a dream job, then threatened to harm his career if he did not cooperate with them, Carpenter concluded after lengthy hearings.
Details here from the Boston Globe. (via Bashman)