John WorldPeace
Attorney at Law
2620 Fountainview, Suite 106
Houston, Texas 77057
Tel:  713-784-7618   Fax:  713-784-9063
email: johnworldpeace@aol.com 

June 24, 2003

To:       The Honorable Judge of the Court                                            via hand delivery to the court 

Re:       2002-42081:  Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. John WorldPeace: 269^th Dist. Ct.: Harris County, Texas: Honorable James R. Fry, presiding.

On April 23, 2003, Judge Fry signed and entered a Judgment for Disbarment against me in the above lawsuit.  I filed a Motion to Modify the Judgment and Motion for New Trial.

Yesterday, June 23, 2003, Judge Fry set aside the Judgment for Disbarment.  (See attached) The lawsuit is not over but I feel confident that in the end, I will prevail. 

After the Judgment for Disbarment was entered, someone sent many if not all the Harris County Judges a notice of the court’s ruling.  I thought that it was the State Bar who sent the notices but at the hearing on Monday the State Bar denied it. 

In order to quash some of the rumors that have been going around, I would submit the following, if you are interested: 

In 1993, the State Bar sued me after the statute of limitations had run.   The suit was dismissed by Judge Clauson on my Motion.  However, I have had to deal with the fact that the lawsuit is in the public record and I had to deal with it when I was running for governor.  I did not move to seal the file because I thought sealing the record would create unfounded speculation.  I did not get my day in court but I did file a detailed answer before the suit was dismissed.

I did not file suit on the State Bar at that time because I was living in Colorado but I told Dawn Miller, attorney for the State Bar then and now the Chief Disciplinary Counsel for the State Bar, that if she ever filed anything against me again that I would shut down the grievance process. 

In June 2000, a fee dispute arose between myself and a client and the client filed a grievance, I sued the client and Dawn Miller pursued the grievance.  I was offered a public reprimand in the matter and I refused it.  Two years later the Commission filed suit.  Two and a half months later, just before my motion for summary judgment was to be heard, Dawn Miller added five more complaints to the lawsuit without filing them with the Clerk of the Supreme Court as is required per Rule 3.01, 3.02 and 3.03 of the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure. 

My position is that the court had no jurisdiction to hear these additional complaints and its Judgment for Disbarment is therefore void.  Also, the court severed my mandatory counter claims over my objection and went to trial on the TDRPC Rule violations only which is an abuse of discretion.  Also, the first complaint was barred by res judicata because it had been tried to conclusion in the 281^st District Court six weeks prior to the disciplinary trial beginning. 

There are many more issues involved because I deliberately refused to cooperate with the grievance committee in order to have standing in the courts to have these issues addressed.  I know many think I am crazy to put my license on the line to challenge the unworkable and abusive, coercive grievance process but that is because they have not had to deal with a bad faith permanent public reprimand that Dawn Miller achieved by suing me ten years ago after the statute of limitations had run. 

One fundamental problem with the grievance process is that the attorney has no due process rights in the grievance process prior to an election for a trial de novo if “just cause” is found by the investigatory committee.  The law is unclear whether an attorney can assert the Fifth Amendment in the investigatory process without further violating other TDRPC rules. 

Another major problem with the grievance process is that a client who would not have a dog’s chance in Hades of getting over the “suit within a suit” and “but for” requirements in an attorney malpractice case can have an attorney disbarred for refusing to file a frivolous and groundless lawsuit via a grievance. 

In regards to attorney/client complaints, there must be one consistent set of rules that logically applies to both legal malpractice lawsuits and disciplinary lawsuits.  Another problem is that the State Bar has a derivative lawsuit with regards to attorney/client complaints per Rule 4.06 TRDP and yet the State Bar alleges that the common law and statutory mandates of compulsory counter claims and res judicata do not apply in a disciplinary lawsuit. 

The most irritating and abusive problem is that in my case the State Bar deliberately manipulated the investigatory process by placing the majority of the frivolous and groundless complaints against me with one committee of its 33 investigatory committees which the State Bar knew would find “just cause” against me. 

In a nutshell, the grievance system is subject to manipulation and is arbitrary and therefore unfair, unjust, and harmful to the entire legal system because attorneys cannot afford to take on indigent clients who will use the grievance process to cause problems for an attorney who they believe has not taken care of their legal problems.  The truth is that if an attorney was to follow the TDRPC to the letter, he or she would have to charge $500 per hour. 

If anyone has a question, feel free to contact me.  Email is the most effective method of communicating with me.  At some point this whole matter will be on the Internet. 

Very sincerely,

WorldPeace

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