By Rachelle Treiber/ QUAD-CITY TIMES
A Davenport lawyer and former Scott County magistrate has been reprimanded by an Iowa judicial ethics board for the second time in just more than two years, resulting in the suspension of his law license indefinitely with no possibility of reinstatement for four months.
According to an Iowa Supreme Court Board of Professional Ethics and Conduct decision published Oct. 10, Randy J. Hohenadel neglected two clients' legal matters and misrepresented the status of those matters to his clients and the court in order to conceal his actions.
Board documents indicate that Hohenadel, who served as a Scott County magistrate from the mid-1980s until August 1997, practices law in Davenport primarily in the area of court-appointed criminal defense, which is paid for by the State Public Defender's office.
Heather Lindsay of the Department of Inspection and Appeals, the agency that pays attorneys on contract with the State Public Defender's Office, said Hohenadel has been paid $19,313 so far this calendar year for public defender work.
Last year he was paid $16,168 by the state.
Documents also state that problems began to arise for the attorney about four years ago, when he "began drinking at inappropriate times and to excess."
Hohenadel told the Quad-City Times on Friday that he has completed a treatment program and can apply for reinstatement of his license in about 5 weeks.
"I have completed a program and as I understand the rules you make a request for reinstatement no sooner than 60 days before the end of the suspension. It's not an automatic reinstatement, but I would hope to be back then," he said.
Documents verify that he obtained an alcohol evaluation in March of this year, and at the time of his hearing one month later, "had been diligently complying with a treatment program."
Ethics board documents also said witnesses at the hearing testified to Hohenadel's basically good and trustworthy nature, as well as his considerable skills as a criminal defense lawyer.
"With the assistance of medical professionals and his peers, Hohenadel could be a productive member of the bar, so long as he remained sober," the witnesses stated.
The first of two cases that brought the attorney to the attention of the ethics board was a criminal matter he was appointed to by the court, in which he filed a notice of appeal on behalf of his client and then failed to prosecute the appeal.
The second matter concerned a personal injury action which had to be dismissed for lack of prosecution.
In this case Hohenadel, who the ethics board said "has never disputed the relevant facts that his conduct violated the Iowa Code of Professional Responsibility," misrepresented to a district court judge that he had been unable to locate a defendant for service of process while concealing from his client the true reason for the delay in his client's case.
These matters were not Hohenadel's first ethical violations.
He also was reprimanded by an ethics board in September 1999 for failing to file a malpractice suit on behalf of one of his clients, then lying to the client that he had filed the case.
Hohenadel did not lose his law license in that matter, but the infraction was noted on his record and subsequently was considered in the more recent matters.
In addition, board documents state "the three matters brought to the attention of the disciplinary system do not appear to be isolated instances of unethical conduct."
However, the documents also state "the record shows he is on the road to recovery," and "his unethical conduct does not appear to reflect a fundamentally dishonest character, but rather is a consequence of his alcoholism."
Rachelle Treiber can be contacted at (563) 383-2363 or rtreiber@qctimes.com.
email: clr@clr.org
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Posted November 5, 2001