Opinion
No. 01 Civ. 9991 (DLC) (DFE).
June 14, 2005
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
On May 26, 2005, Damond J. Carter, Esq. faxed me a letter (dated May 20) in which he requests me to allow him to withdraw as counsel. He says that the reason is "a lack of funding." In response, William Pinero sent me a letter dated June 3 and apparently written before he received my June 2 Memorandum and Order.
My June 2 order directed Mr. Carter to serve and file answers to six directives, including:
2. Tell me what work you promised to do, and what fee you quoted.
3. Tell me how much money, if any, you received on Pinero's case.
4. Send me copies of any fee agreements concerning Pinero's case, and any fee invoices, and any warnings that you might move to withdraw as counsel.
Mr. Carter responded by letter dated June 9, but not very clearly. He says that Pinero's parents agreed to pay a fee of $4,000, to be paid at a rate of "about $500 per month." He says they paid a total of $2,800, all of it between February 2003 and September 2003. He does not answer exactly "what work [he] promised to do" for $4,000, but it seems that he promised to file a coram nobis motion and a 440 motion in state court and then an Amended Petition in our Court. The promised work should have been described in a fee agreement. Despite my Directive #4, Mr. Carter has not sent me a copy of any fee agreement. His June 9 letter says: "The particular contract was signed [apparently by Mr. Carter and by the parents] and provided to Mr. Pinero, [but] my records don't indicate that his signed and notarized portion of the contract was returned." Nevertheless, it would be surprising if Mr. Carter has not kept the text of the fee agreement — at least showing the signatures of him and the parents, and at the very least showing the text with no signatures.
My Directive #4 also ordered Mr. Carter to send me copies of "any fee invoices, and any warnings that you might move to withdraw as counsel." In response, Mr. Carter has sent me only one document: a memorandum dated December 21, 2003, sent by him to "Current Clients" in 14 named New York prisons; in it, he seems to refer to a standardized fee contract, and announces that "I unwittingly charged too little" and "I will drop all but 10 [of my fee-contract] cases." In addition, Pinero has sent me a copy of a two-page letter dated May 24, 2005 from Mr. Carter, enclosing his motion to withdraw as counsel and saying: "for the fees (or even the increased fee of [an additional] $2,000), it [is] simply impossible to do anything and will create a burden that cannot be carried."
I direct Mr. Carter to serve and file, as soon as possible and in any event by June 17, 2005, a more complete answer to my Directive #2 (after quoting it), and a more complete answer to my Directive #4 (after quoting it).
I remind both Mr. Carter and William Pinero that any letter to the Court should start out by listing the docket number.