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Former or current Justices of the Georgia Supreme Court, including Britt Grant, now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Carol Hunstein, David Nahmias, Harold Melton, Robert Benham, Keith Blackwell, Nels SD Peterson, Michael Boggs, Sarah Warren either have and/or continue to cover-up the violation of ethical rules, bar disciplinary procedural rules, oath of office violations and misdemeanor and felony crimes committed by the Georgia State Bar Office of General Counsel, the state agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting attorneys for violating ethics rules and in doing so, these former and current Georgia Supreme Court Justices have themselves violated the very rules and laws that they enforce and are involved in a massive cover-up of improprieties committed by both the State Bar of Georgia and the Georgia Supreme Court, including both of their staff attorneys who draft the fraudulent opinions disbarring lawyers.
The General Counsel's office of the State Bar of Georgia, overseen by Paula Frederick, is comprised of ten lawyers, including William J. Cobb who longer is employed by the State Bar of Georgia, who screen, investigate, prosecute and recommend discipline of a lawyer with the Georgia Supreme Court getting the final say. After a complaint is screened, it is looked at by the "Investigative Panel" who determine if there is probable cause that an attorney violated a bar rule. They always do and "rubber stamp" probable cause. Then a Special Master, whose powers are limited, is then appointed as a judge or referee of sorts to oversee discovery and then issue an order and recommendation as to whether an attorney should be disciplined and to what extent, which can either be accepted or rejected by a "Review Panel" who in turn make a recommendation to the Georgia Supreme Court for the last word. In my case Patrick Head was appointed as a Special Master. The only thing I can say about him is that the is extraordinarily unethical and was part of the collusion and conspiracy to disbar me.
Sam Levine, an attorney in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia since 2004 experienced this first-hand corruption and abuse of power by the State Bar of Georgia Prosecutor's Office when they began a frivolous investigation against him beginning in September 2014 for alleged violation of bar rules without probable cause or sufficient evidence to prove that Levine violated any bar rules.
In the beginning of Levine's case, which resulted and ended with the Georgia Supreme Court issuing an invalid and void disbarment order on March 5, 2018 even though the Justices were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed against them by Levine several weeks earlier, bar counsel, William J. Cobb abused his power by trying to gain an unfair advantage over Levine when he threatened him that if he did not consent to a voluntary suspension of his law license for alleged and purported "unfitness" to practice law as represented to the bar by Levine's estranged brother Kenneth Levine and mother, Carol Levine, Cobb would file an emergency motion with the Supreme Court to try and get Levine's license suspended. According to Levine, "Yea, when Cobb did that I was appalled and I asked him to put up or shut up so to speak" - " show me what you have to prove that I am not fit to practice law". "Cobb never did and insisted throughout the remainder of the bar case that I was "mentally disabled" even though there was no evidence of that and even after I produced a letter from my doctor confirming I was not." "Whatever trust and faith I had in the Georgia Bar, I lost after that encounter."
Without the necessary probable cause or sufficient evidence, Cobb filed a formal bar complaint against Levine containing numerous false statements, misrepresentations and omission of facts. To add insult to injury, the person who appointed the Special Master also known as the "coordinating" special master, Bryan Cavan, was consistently physically absent from Georgia even though the bar procedural rules required he be physically present as any other judge would. Instead, Cavan spent the bulk of the time during the bar case at his second vacation home in The Villages, Florida and when repeatedly requested by Levine to act or rule on requests, motions or to issue subpoenas, Cavan ignored Levine. In another instance, when Levine discovered that bar counsel William J. Cobb and Investigative Panel Member, John Newberry illegally tried to obtain Levine's confidential, sealed and HIPAA protected medical records and tried to use other illegally obtained medical records that Cobb improperly came in the possession of in support of their prosecution against Levine, Levine justifiably filed a bar complaint against Cobb and Newberry which prompted Cobb to retaliate by filing a frivolous motion for sanctions in violation of the bar's standing policies on conflict of interest, retaliation and whistleblowing.
What happened next truly shocked me, stated Levine. "When the bar received my bar complaint, instead of referring it to an outside counsel, they handled it in their own office even though that was a major conflict of interest and they ended up scuttling and dismissing it." When Levine requested, as provided for under the procedural rules at the time, that an outside counsel be appointed to investigate the cover-up, not only did Frederick as General Counsel refuse to do so but after the conclusion of the bar case, she coordinated with the Georgia Supreme Court to actually change the rule about appointment of outside counsel to investigate misconduct or policy violations within the General Counsel's office. "Unbelievable", stated Levine. "In effect in one fell swoop, the State Bar decreased their own oversight and accountability of their activities and misdeeds." "I mean, what organization would do that other than one that wants to be free to violate the rules and get away with it without any scrutiny." "That's the definition of corruption in my book", said Levine.
In the final analysis, the Georgia Supreme Court and the State Bar of Georgia have developed and implemented an illegal scheme to wrongfully disbar lawyers by deeming them to have "defaulted" on the pleadings and case when they overlook outstanding discovery and therefore purportedly admitted to the bar's allegations of bar rule violations when the lawyer, normally preoccupied and dealing with crises as I was, is unable to respond to discovery. Normally in a case when you send discovery to the opposing party & they have not responded, you contact them & request that they send the discovery to you in 10 days and if they don't, you file a motion to compel potentially leading to an order to respond to discovery. It's at that point if you disregard that order that the court could issue sanctions, but even in my case, the Special Master Patrick Head did not have the power and authority under Georgia Bar Disciplinary Procedural Rule 4-221(b)(2)(c)(2) or Uniform Superior Court Rule 46(c) to issue a sanctions order striking my answers to the bar complaints.
Bar prosecutor, William J. Cobb never contacted me about the outstanding discovery, never sent me a good faith letter requesting my response to the discovery and never filed a motion to compel. He just filed a motion for sanctions seeking to strike my answers to the bar complaints as the very first step in resolving a discovery dispute and that is simply not how the law works. As long as the attorney files an answer to the bar complaints, they cannot and it is impossible to default on the pleadings". That's number 1. Number 2, under state law, O.C.G.A. 15-19-32, a lawyer such as myself has a right to a jury trial in the county where they live, which I did not have. Moreover, the State Bar of Georgia and the Georgia Supreme Court completely cut out and usurped the authority of the Chief Judge of Dekalb County Superior Court to rule on discovery issues and to hold a jury trial.
The Georgia State Bar has illegally and wrongfully disbarred god knows how many lawyers without due process or an opportunity to be heard under this illegal attorney disbarment scheme.
