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Lawyer Reprimanded for Alleged 'Cut You Up' Remark to Adversary's Client
New Jersey Law Journal
June 03, 2009
The New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday disciplined a lawyer who allegedly told an opposing party, "I'm going to cut you up into bits and pieces, put you into a box and send you to India and your parents won't recognize you."
In reprimanding Maplewood solo Joel Ziegler, a lawyer since 1966, the Court said he violated rules requiring courtesy to participants in the legal process and prohibiting conduct detrimental to the administration of justice.
The incident that got Ziegler in trouble occurred in the hallway of the Union County Courthouse on Sept. 25, 2001, while he was representing Himanshu Sharma in a domestic violence, custody and support case against Sharma's wife, Anu Upadhyay.
Ziegler became incensed over Upadhyay's testimony at a hearing before Superior Court Judge Joseph Donohue. "His face was red, flushed," Upadhyay testified later.
Her lawyer, Barbara Worth of Union, gave a somewhat different version of what Ziegler said: "I'll have you cut up into little pieces, or little bits and pieces, put in a box and sent back to India, or wherever it is you come from."
Ziegler denied using the threat that he would put Upadhyay in a box, but his version wasn't much different than the other two.
"You should be ashamed of yourself. You should be cut up in little pieces and sent back to India, period," is what he remembers saying.
Whatever words were used, Upadhyay told a district ethics committee she was devastated.
The Disciplinary Review Board said Zeigler erred again when he wrote a letter to Worth after the incident that he was going to "prove to the court that your client is an unmitigated liar. There is no way that we will give up custody, so I suggest that you prepare yourself for a 'Battle Royale.' "
He also threatened to file ethics charges against Worth.
The letter "crossed the line of aggressive advocacy," the DRB said, finding that the threats were intended to solely to intimidate Worth and her client.
There is no dispute that the incident occurred during a particularly bitter battle between the husband and wife, whose marriage had been arranged a month before the couple came to the United States in 1998.
They exchanged accusations of abuse of their child and they each obtained temporary restraining orders, though the custody and support issues eventually were ironed out by the courts.
Ziegler said on Tuesday that Upadhyay made false accusations, including one that Sharma had plied their two-year-old child with alcohol.
"The heat of battle sometimes gets the best of you," he says. "I was steamed. I lost my cool."
"I have been a lawyer 43 years and that was my first offense," he says.
Ziegler did have another brush with the ethics police, but that grievance was dismissed. In 2002, Ziegler was held in contempt for refusing to try a criminal case after Union County Superior Court Judge James Heimlich declined to grant a postponement.
A district ethics committee found that he violated a rule requiring continuations of representations that are ordered by courts. But the DRB dismissed the complaint on grounds the client preferred the public defender to whom Ziegler wanted to give the case and who was ready to proceed.
"It's not a fun time," he says of encounters with the discipline system.
