No More Innocent By-Standing Lawyers in the Palmetto State

The law is hugely fascinating considering that although it is supposed to reflect right and wrong it can often generate an outcome that offends many people's sense of what is right and what is wrong. This is how murderers get off Scot-free on a technicality or how in quite a few states accidentally shooting someone can warrant jail time though killing someone through drunken driving would not.

The field of property law is no different and can offer its own rather surprising case studies, such as when a New York judge decided that a divorcing Brooklyn couple may literally split their house fifty-fifty, with the man owning the dining room while his ex-wife got the kitchen! Thanks to our ever more interconnected world, a considerable number of blogs having to do with property law exist cyberspace through which it is no longer essential to be an attorney oneself or a court reporter or an industry insider like Isaac Toussie so as to keep abreast of the most recent developments.

Frequently, matters of right and wrong deal with not to just an attorney's client but even the lawyer him or herself. And so it was that a South Carolina real estate lawyer was recently found by a court to be at fault for his clients' illegal mischief. The Supreme Court of The Palmetto State found that while the actions of James Fayssoux, Esq. may not necessarily constitute criminal activity, charges of lawyerly misconduct were indeed warranted. The punishment took the form of nothing more than a public reprimand, however, as Mr. Fayssoux had actually self-reported the misconduct, cooperated with the disciplinary investigation, and had no prior history of such misbehavior. But the message was clear enough: lawyers cannot simply imagine themselves disinterested conduits in the manner of a telephone company or internet service provider, merely passing along information for good or ill.


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Author Paul Wise frequently follows the observations of industry insiders such as Isaac Toussie when it comes to real estate and the law.