ORLANDO – A former Florida attorney claims The Florida Bar and Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice John Couriel, along with others, have used their governmental and disciplinary power to convert her protected petitioning into “the predicates for attorney discipline.”
The plaintiff, who uses the pseudonym Jane Doe in her 66-page complaint, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division.
The named defendants in the lawsuit are: The Florida Bar; Joshua E. Doyle, executive director of The Florida Bar; Michael Fox Orr, president of The Florida Bar; Couriel; Clayton D. Simmons; Jan K. Wichrowski; Adria E. Quintela; John D. Carnahan; Michael G. Takac; the City of Mount Dora, Florida; Brett Livingston; James “Jim” Deleu, interim chief of the Mount Dora Police Department; Greenberg Traurig PA; M. Hope Keating; and Michael H. Moody.
“Plaintiff alleges that this general regulatory authority did not authorize subordinate actors to retaliate for protected petitioning, to use sealed juvenile judicial materials contrary to governing restrictions, to create factual adjudications outside delegated authority, or to prevent a merits forum for independent constitutional and statutory claims that The Florida Bar’s disciplinary jurisdiction had no authority to adjudicate in the first place,” the complaint states.
Doe, who was stripped of her license in 2015, contends the “disciplinary machinery” was turned against her after she complained of racial discrimination and prosecutorial misconduct and sought judicial disqualification for “perceived prejudice.”
She argues that the resulting prosecution relied heavily on her child’s sealed juvenile proceedings, and that her continuing objections were used in “aggravation.”
She also claims that a sanction crossing the 90-day reinstatement line was sought and imposed so that professional eligibility would not return automatically when the suspension period expired.
“Plaintiff further alleges that the disciplinary result was later used to terminate her Staff Counsel employment, trigger reciprocal federal discipline, support continuing monetary enforcement, and foreclose later independent civil-rights claims through jurisdictional and preclusion arguments rather than merits adjudication,” she wrote in her lawsuit.
According to the filing, Doe is an honorably discharged U.S. Army veteran. She was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2009.
During the material period, she worked in insurance, Medicare Secondary Payer compliance, and corporate/in-house legal functions.
“Plaintiff specifically disputes the disciplinary allegation that she ‘resided and practiced law’ in Lake County and distinguishes self-representation and parental participation in a juvenile matter from maintaining a law practice for clients,” her filing notes.
Doe claims she seeks redress for independent wrongs, not a review of attorney discipline.
“This action does not ask this Court to reverse, modify, or sit in appellate review of the Supreme Court of Florida’s March 31, 2015 disciplinary judgment,” the lawsuit states.
“Plaintiff does not seek restoration of her license by judicial decree, expungement of the disciplinary record, or any order altering the disciplinary judgment’s text.”
However, she seeks damages and relief for conduct that is “legally and factually independent of the correctness of that judgment.”
“Plaintiff alleges that Defendants and their counsel, in the litigation that followed the discipline, repeatedly told successive tribunals that Plaintiff’s independent civil claims were, in substance, an improper collateral attack on or ‘appeal’ from the disciplinary judgment,” the suit states.
“Plaintiff alleges this characterization was incorrect and was advanced for the purpose and with the effect of preventing any court – state or federal – from reaching the merits of claims that neither the Florida Bar’s disciplinary apparatus nor the Florida Supreme Court’s disciplinary jurisdiction had authority to adjudicate.”
She argues that the ethics complaint she filed against a government prosecutor and a motion seeking judicial disqualification in a predatory lending case are petitioning activity.
Doe seeks damages for past and continuing lost earnings, lost employment benefits, lost “professional opportunities,” out-of-pocket losses, reputational injury, legal costs, and other compensable damages.
She also seeks injunctive relief against “presently responsible officials” to end what she describes as “ongoing unconstitutional enforcement.
She is representing herself in the lawsuit.
In a Sept. 28 order, Magistrate Judge Leslie Hoffman Price said the plaintiff must file an amended complaint using her full name.
