Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
On March 25, Cornell Johnson was found guilty in Denver County District Court of first-degree assault with a deadly weapon that caused serious bodily injury, a class 3 felony.
The criminal charge alleged that on or about June 25, 2022, Johnson unlawfully and feloniously caused serious bodily injury to a victim using a firearm with the intent to cause serious bodily injury to another person. Johnson’s original sentence of 10 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections with a 36-month period of parole was modified to a five-year probation sentence.
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved Johnson’s stipulation and suspended Johnson for three years, effective Nov. 19.
Joseph Musselman represented a client in a parenting time dispute in which several competing motions were filed. The court combined all pending motions into a hearing set for February 2021. The parties were to file a joint trial management certificate, or JTMC, but Musselman didn’t file a JTMC, and he didn’t file a response to any of the pending motions. At the combined hearing, the court precluded Musselman’s client from submitting evidence and from offering some testimony based on that evidence, given Musselman’s failure to participate in drafting the JTMC and to file responses.
The court ultimately concluded that Musselman’s client wasn’t credible, found that she had violated a parenting time order, and ordered her to pay her former spouse’s fees and costs, which totaled $13,918.50.
Musselman challenged the reasonableness of the fees and costs, and the court set a hearing on the motion for June 2021. But Musselman didn’t inform his client about the hearing and didn’t attend himself. The court deemed the motion abandoned and held Musselman and his client jointly and severally liable for the $6,084 that the client’s former spouse spent in fees and costs defending against the challenge.
Later, the client’s former spouse again moved to enforce the parenting plan. Musselman again failed to file a JTMC. At the hearing on that motion, the court found the client had violated the parenting plan and ordered her to pay her former spouse’s attorney’s fees and costs, which totaled $7,941.22.
A year later, the client’s former spouse moved for entry of judgment against the client for the three awards of attorney’s fees and costs. Musselman moved to withdraw from the representation and later moved to intervene personally, seeking relief from a void judgment, challenging the $6,084 award for the missed hearing, and asking the court to rule on his original objection as to the first awarded amount of $13,918.50.
Ultimately, those awards were upheld, and Musselman was ordered to pay additional attorney’s fees and costs. Musselman filed a notice of suggestion of bankruptcy, which stayed issuance of an order on the request for additional attorney’s fees and costs. Several months later, an order of discharge was entered in Musselman’s bankruptcy case. Musselman then promptly paid the full $6,084 from the missed June 2021 hearing to the client’s former spouse.
Musselman’s misconduct in the representation was similar to, and contemporaneous in time with, misconduct in another disciplinary case and was largely driven by the same personal circumstances that mitigated his misconduct in that matter. Musselman remains on probation in that case, according to the disciplinary opinion.
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved Musselman’s stipulation to discipline and publicly censured him effective Nov. 19.
In 2021, Craig Skinner agreed to represent an incarcerated client in an action alleging that the Colorado Department of Corrections mismanaged the client’s diabetes care. In May 2021, the client’s family member paid Skinner $3,000 in cash. Skinner didn’t retain a record of the fee agreement. Some of the funds were from a third party, but Skinner didn’t obtain his client’s informed consent to the third party’s contribution.
When Skinner received the $3,000, he hadn’t earned the funds. Rather than deposit the money into his trust account, he credited to the client’s case $3,000 in earned fees that remained in his trust account from a different matter. The credit wasn’t reflected in a ledger. At the time of the transaction, Skinner didn’t maintain a written record-keeping system for his trust account documenting the funds received into and disbursed from the account.
Skinner didn’t communicate with his client before taking any steps in the case. In August 2021, Skinner learned from the client’s case manager that the DOC had resolved the client’s medical issue. Skinner concluded from that information that the representation had ended and his fees had been earned. But he neither confirmed with his client that the DOC had resolved the issue nor informed his client that the representation had concluded.
In a different matter, Skinner represented a client and the client’s significant other in a civil case. Discovery responses in the case were due on May 22, 2023, but Skinner didn’t send the requests to or discuss them with his client before the response deadline. Skinner also didn’t communicate with the client’s significant other about the requests until June 2023. Skinner didn’t request an extension to respond to discovery before the due date. Instead, on June 14, 2023, he sent to opposing counsel unsigned discovery responses, which didn’t include his client’s responses to interrogatories.
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved Skinner’s stipulation to discipline and suspended him for one year and one day, all to be stayed upon Skinner’s successful completion of a two-year conditional probation. Skinner’s probation took effect Nov. 19.