No First Amendment Protection for Lawyer's Rants
Lawyers beware....we now have less First Amendment protections in our personal lives than other citizens.
According to this Connecticut ruling, we're officers of the Court even when we're off-duty!
An attorney's poison-pen letter to former West Hartford Probate Judge John A. Berman is not protected free speech, a Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled late last month, upholding a reprimand lodged against Joseph Notopoulos.
The West Hartford, Conn., lawyer had argued that he wrote and sent the letter in his capacity as a private citizen, not a member of the bar, and therefore shouldn't be disciplined under ethics rules prohibiting attorneys from engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice or making statements intended to disrupt a tribunal.
Not so said the Court:
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