A.G. Gancarski
Florida lawyer Chris Chestnut may soon be suspended from The Florida Bar.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga tapped Fifth Circuit Judge Don Briggs to immediately appoint a referee for the case on Wednesday.
Once that referee is appointed, the referee will hear, conduct, and try the matter within seven days. Seven days later, a report and recommendation to the Supreme Court of Florida is due, addressing The Florida Bar’s petition for emergency suspension and the related filings.
Chestnut has already been the subject of nine different Bar disciplinary issues, as WJXT reports, including a May complaint charging “egregious conduct involving … lack of competence, candor, diligence, and communication, solicitation, dishonesty, failure to supervise, and excessive fee.”
Chestnut is fighting this, despite repeated warnings that the more he fights, the worse the consequences could be.
Permanent disbarment is a possibility.
Meanwhile, Chestnut has a filing of his own.
Last week in Leon County, the embattled barrister filed “Chestnut v. Robert Rush, FL Bar, etc.”
In that filing, he accuses the defendants of “vexatious conduct” and an attempt to establish an “illusory pattern of misconduct” by the lawyer, amidst 85 pages of allegations of “conspiracy” and “frustration of a business purpose.”
Among the accusations: manipulation of the Bar’s grievance process; “manufacturing, manipulating, and mischaracterizing evidence” against Chestnut; manufacturing of facts; and providing “blatantly false evidence” against him.
