don’t repay debt = lose your right to practice law

An interesting blurb in reportonbusiness.com. The nub: Lawyer fails to repay student loans. Court revokes his license to practice law. Why?

“there is a clear and rational connection between Santulli’s lack of trustworthiness or reliability in carrying out responsibilities and the likelihood that he will harm a client, obstruct administration of justice or violate the disciplinary rules.”

It seems somewhat counterintuitive to take away a person’s primary means of earning an income to repay the debt as punishment for not repaying it – almost a “lose-lose” solution if you will. In addition, the reasons given seem to be somewhat overreaching. It’s one thing to take away someone’s license to practice if they do harm a client, obstruct administration of justice or violate disciplinary rules, but doing so because there is a “connection” to the “likelihood” that they will do so? Sure, there may possibly be some tenuous connection to failure to pay debt and being less professional to one’s clients. There is also a higher likelihood that he may rob a bank? While they’re at it, why don’t they just throw him in jail for that as well?

I’m certainly not suggesting he shouldn’t repay the debt or that there shouldn’t be sanctions for that. There should be. Seize his assets. Garnish his wages. And so on. There are a whole arsenal of tools available to creditors. But taking away his license to practice. That I don’t get.

Guess I better go pay that credit card off…

Jail as a Retirement Option

Somewhat frightening (or perhaps sad) article on someone who basically chose to go to jail to support himself. The nub:

On May 1, Mr. Bowers — or, as he is known to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, prisoner A535976 — handed a teller a stickup note, got four $20 bills and then handed them over to a security guard, telling the guard that it was his day to be a hero, according to accounts by The Columbus Dispatch and The Associated Press.

At his trial in October, he explained to the judge that he was about to turn 63 and had lost his job making deliveries for a drug wholesaler. He said that with only minimum-wage jobs available, he preferred to draw a three-year sentence, which would get him to age 66, when, he said, he could live off of Social Security. And that is what he got.