Youngstown Daily Legal News

Dayton attorney suspended for third time

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: July 7, 2016

The Supreme Court of Ohio recently adopted a recommendation from the Board of Professional Conduct and suspended Dayton attorney John Joseph Scaccia from the practice of law.

The divided high court ruled 4-3 to suspend Scaccia for 18 months with six months stayed with justices Paul Pfeifer, Sharon Kennedy, Judith French and William O’Neill forming the majority.

The dissent, formed by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and justices Terrence O’Donnell and Judith Lanzinger, wanted no stay of Scaccia’s 18-month suspension which it would order to run consecutively with other sanctions that Scaccia received in separate disciplinary cases.

In its per curiam opinion, the majority dismissed Scaccia’s claim that the sanction recommended by the board was too severe and found no evidence to back Scaccia’s claims of poor health as mitigating credit.

According to court documents, Scaccia was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 1983.

This was the third disciplinary case that the state Supreme Court has decided against him in the past two years.

In 2014, the high court suspended Scaccia’s law license for one year with six months stayed on the condition that he pay restitution after it found that he had failed to competently manage a case, charged an improper fee and failed to properly manage client funds.

That suspension remains in effect because Scaccia failed to pay the restitution.

In 2015, Scaccia was again found to have violated rules regarding client trust accounts and to have failed to properly communicate the scope of his representation to a client.

Another one-year suspension with six months stayed was imposed, to be served concurrently with Scaccia’s first sanction.

In January 2015, the Dayton Bar Association filed yet another complaint against Scaccia, charging him with professional misconduct.

A hearing before the Board of Professional Conduct resulted in findings that Scaccia failed to provide competent representation to a client, failed to act with reasonable diligence in representing a client, knowingly disobeyed an obligation under the rules of a tribunal and intentionally or habitually failed to make a reasonably diligent effort to comply with a legally proper discovery request by an opposing party.

The board found as aggravating factors that Scaccia had prior discipline, he committed multiple offenses, he refused to acknowledge the wrongful nature of his conduct, his conduct harmed his client and the opposing party and he did not pay a court-ordered sanction of almost $6,000.

“In mitigation, the board found that Scaccia lacked a dishonest or selfish motive, he had a cooperative attitude toward the board proceedings, he submitted evidence of good character and reputation and other sanctions have already been imposed for some of his misconduct,” the Supreme Court’s opinion states.

Scaccia objected to the board’s failure to give him mitigating credit for alleged health issues which he claimed he experienced at the time of his misconduct and which affected his work.

According to Scaccia, a vitamin-D deficiency led to “absentmindedness.”

Without any medical evidence to back his claims, the board refused to recognize Scaccia’s health claims.

Scaccia objected, claiming that the board set an “unrealistic and unattainable standard” to establish mitigating evidence and that his testimony about his health problems should have been enough.

The Supreme Court disagreed, siding with the board and noting that the Rules for the Governance of the Bar require a medical diagnosis from a qualified health care professional in order to submit a health issue into mitigating evidence.

“Having considered the ethical duties violated, the mitigating and aggravating factors and the sanctions imposed in comparable cases, we overrule Scaccia’s objections and accept the board’s recommended sanction,” the high court wrote.

In addition to his suspension, Scaccia was ordered to pay the restitution he still owes from his first disciplinary case, plus interest and court costs.

The case is cited Dayton Bar Assn. v. Scaccia, Slip Opinion No. 2016-Ohio-3299.

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