ELLEN A. PANSKY

Ellen A. Pansky co-founded Pansky Markle Attorneys at Law in 1989 with her late husband, R. Gerald “Jerry” Markle. They’d both worked at the State Bar, then at litigation firms.

“At the time, there were very few State Bar defense counsel, so we decided to open our own firm based on big firm procedures,” she said. Their experience included the dozen or so State Bar cases Pansky had argued before the state Supreme Court in the days before a State Bar review department took over. “I don’t think there’s another lawyer now practicing who has by Supreme Court experience in the attorney discipline field,” she added.

Pansky spoke the day after the State Bar Court Judge Yvette D. Roland dismissed part of the charges against Pansky’s client Joseph L. Dunn, a former State Bar executive director. In the Matter of Joseph Lawrence Dunn, State Bar No. 123063, SBC-22-O-30655-YDR (State Bar Court, filed July 5, 2022).

The bar had charged Dunn with three counts of moral turpitude for alleged falsehoods Dunn made to directors regarding proposed legislation and expenses for an overseas trip. Roland dismissed as time-barred Count One and part of Count Three. Those charges alleged that Dunn made a false statement that constituted moral turpitude when he said there was a lack of opposition to an Assembly bill that would have allowed the bar to sue people who practice law without a license.

“It’s really unusual to get any kind of dismissal in State Bar Court,” Pansky said. “This is a big victory.”

She added that the dismissal order could open the door for a request for terminating sanctions on the remaining charges due to alleged State Bar discovery abuses. Pansky is defending Dunn with co-counsel Mark J. Geragos of Geragos & Geragos.

Pansky, who sits on the State Bar’s ad hoc commission on the discipline system, said she is overloaded with queries from lawyers concerned with new rules regarding oversight and management of their client trust accounts. The rules, put in place in the wake of the Thomas V. Girardi scandal, take effect in April.

“People are panic-stricken, and I have no good solution to some of the problems,” Pansky said, citing a rule that could define any amount in a trust account that is greater than the correct sum may constitute the commingling of funds.

“Thousands of solos without a bookkeeper have never reconciled their accounts, and most who call me don’t have a shortfall; they have too much.” She advocates a rule like that in some other states allowing excess money to go to the client security fund, but the State Bar has yet to act.

“Yet another problem that needs to be addressed,” Pansky said.

– John Roemer