Robert LaPoint was sentence to 3 1/2 years in prison for killing two boaters on Long Lake in Harrison, Maine. I expect there will also be a civil case.
news Property
Transmission line upgrade hearing
“Hearings to allow public comment on a $1.4 billion proposal to upgrade much of the state’s electrical-transmission infrastructure will begin Wednesday with a session in Waterville.The Maine Public Utilities Commission has scheduled two public hearings to allow residents to offer their opinions on a Central Maine Power Co. proposal to add 350 miles of high-voltage transmission lines.
A PUC spokesman said the agency will plan additional public sessions after November.
The proposed 345,000-volt transmission lines would stretch from the southern end of the state through 80 municipalities in the Portland, Augusta and Pittsfield areas. The lines would end near Bangor.
The Waterville public-comment session will take place at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Waterville City Hall. Lewiston City Hall will host a session at 6 p.m. on Nov. 24.”
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Maine Law School Gets Large Gift
Portland, ME – The University of Maine School of Law is pleased to announce a generous gift of $100,000 from Doctors Victor and Anne McKusick of Baltimore, Maryland, to help support the Vincent L. McKusick Diversity Fellowship Fund. With an initial pledge of $100,000 from the law firm of Pierce Atwood LLP, the Maine Law School established this endowment fund late last year with the goal of increasing diversity among the student body and within the legal community in Maine. The Fund honors Vincent L. McKusick, former Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and Victor McKusick’s twin brother.
news
Another disbarment?
The Press Herald is reporting on another case of a lawyer stealing from their client.
A state ethics board has recommended that a Boothbay Harbor lawyer be disbarred for allegedly stealing at least $70,000 from a private trust that he controlled.
Information regarding the conduct of Franklin A. Poe also has been turned over to the financial crimes division of the state Attorney General’s Office, for a criminal review.
Poe was an attorney for Josephine Davis Day, who owned the Trailing Yew boarding home on Monhegan Island from the 1920s until her death in 1996, at age 99.
Poe prepared Day’s will and a trust that provided for the continuing operation of the Trailing Yew Inn. As the sole trustee, Poe was supposed to pay for the inn’s expenses, then divvy up profits to several beneficiaries. Instead, Poe was allegedly siphoning off profits for himself, and he stopped sending out payments entirely in 2003, according to court documents.
Because Poe never responded to the grievances filed against him, the state Board of Bar Overseers, under its rules, considered that an admission of guilt. Lawyers for the board are seeking to have Poe disbarred by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
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Permanent Disbarment for Lawyer
The Verrill Dana attorney who stole thousands of dollars from his clients has been permanently disbarred from practicing law in Maine. This was the first lifetime disbarment in the state.
He will also mostly spend two years in jail.
A former Verrill Dana law partner will not appeal the lifetime disbarment handed down against him by Maine’s highest court.
The historic ruling permanently bans John D. Duncan from practicing law in this state, and effectively ends his law career. It is the most severe professional sanction ever imposed on a Maine lawyer, according to the state Board of Bar Overseers.
“He accepts the consequences,” Duncan’s lawyer, Toby Dilworth, said Monday.
“From the beginning of my representation of him, he has acknowledged his misconduct and taken full responsibility.”
news
Portland Firm takes on Missionaries Case
A Portland law firm is one of three lead counsels involved in a federal lawsuit filed by relatives of U.S. missionaries killed in Colombia.
The suit claims that Chiquita Brands International Inc. contributed to their deaths by financing the leftist rebel group known as FARC.
Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios is representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Miami. It seeks unspecified damages for families of five missionaries from the Sanford, Fla.-based New Tribes Mission. They were kidnapped in the 1990s, held hostage for lengthy periods and killed by members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the suit says.
news
Maine Incarceration Rate Lowest
While the Country a whole has jailed over a million and half people, Maine’s rate is the lowest.
Maine had the nation’s lowest incarceration rate in 2005, the latest year for which data is available, according to a new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The report found that the country’s prison population nearly tripled over the last two decades – rising from around 585,000 in 1987 to nearly 1.6 million in 2007.
It also found that for the first time, more than one out of every 100 American adults is behind bars.
The Pew report shows that despite recent concerns in Maine about prison overcrowding, the state has relatively few inmates when compared with other states. Maine also spends a comparatively small percentage of its tax revenue on jails and prisons.
news
More bad lawyers
I find it hard to believe Mr. Clarke did not know his actions were a clear violation. Then to not bother looking it up, or contacting the Bar to find out? He seems to have gotten off easy.
The violations stem from Clark’s financial relationship with an elderly widow who suffered from multiple sclerosis when they first met. She later developed Alzheimer’s disease and a personality disorder, among various physical ailments.
According to Mead, the widow, Eugenie B. Landry, owned a “small but valuable oceanfront residence,” which, upon her death in 2005, was sold.
The estate, which Clark controlled — and under which he was named the beneficiary — received the net proceeds of $524,000 from the sale.
“Clark ultimately took $325,000 from the estate,” Mead wrote in his opinion, adding, “He used the money to cover his children’s tuition costs and to pay off his mortgage.”