Bochetto & Lentz is still responsible for paying a $124,000 arbitration award to an ex-associate who has since been suspended from the bar for stealing money from the firm, the state Superior Court has ruled, rejecting the argument that public policy would preclude paying money to a lawyer who engaged in such conduct.
“We note there exists no published decision in this commonwealth that has utilized public policy as a ground to vacate an arbitration award involving an attorney’s unethical conduct, and we decline to carve out such a rule in this instance,” Judge Sallie Updyke Mundy said for the three-judge panel in the memorandum opinion in Sigman v. Bochetto & Lentz.
