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	Kentucky Bar Association Investigates Two Presidents-Elect One Resigns Post; Other Stands Firm By Andrew Wolfson The Courier-Journal March 14, 2008 http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803140418 In two unrelated cases, the Kentucky Bar Association is investigating alleged ethics violations by its own future president as well as another lawyer who was slated to become president of the Louisville Bar Association next year. The two accused attorneys have responded quite differently. Maria Fernandez, who was president-elect of the Louisville Bar Association, said in an interview that she resigned last week to avoid embarrassing the bar over a court's ruling that she charged an excessive fee in settling the estate of Claudia Sanders, the widow of the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder. But Barbara Bonar, the KBA's president-elect, said she plans to assume the presidency of the 15,544-lawyer state organization in June, despite a judge's findings last year that she acted unethically in the priest-abuse litigation against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington. A judge referred those allegations to the KBA last May. The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled in January that Fernandez, 49, breached her duty to the estate of Sanders, who died in 1996, and may have tried to conceal her $175,000 fee, which it said could warrant her suspension from practice. Fernandez has denied wrongdoing and asked the court to reconsider its ruling. But in an interview, she said that while she regretted having to give up the bar post, she "didn't want to embarrass the LBA." In Bonar's case, Special Judge Robert McGinnis found last year that she committed "numerous ethical violations" by settling cases for individual sex-abuse clients while she was serving as co-counsel for a group of plaintiffs in a class-action suit against the diocese. Lawyers in class actions are generally prohibited from settling cases for individual clients because it could reduce the pool of money available to class members. Bonar, 54, said in an interview that she disagrees with McGinnis' findings and has appealed his ruling in a related civil case. "I haven't done anything wrong," she said. The KBA's chief counsel, Linda Gosnell, confirmed on Tuesday that its inquiry tribunal has open investigations pending of Fernandez and Bonar. The disclosure of those investigations is allowed under a new Supreme Court rule that permits the release of information about the status of disciplinary probes if they are prompted by a court's findings in a civil matter. Investigations previously were confidential until a lawyer was found guilty. Lawyers who are found to violate ethics rules may be privately admonished, publicly reprimanded, suspended or disbarred. Louisville lawyer Sheryl Snyder, a former KBA president, said that by declining the top job with the Louisville bar, "Ms. Fernandez has done a commendable thing. It will be interesting to see what happens with Ms. Bonar." Bonar's lawyer, Bill Rambicure, did not return calls this week. But in an interview last year, he said of Bonar's future role as bar leader: "You don't want to reflect poorly on the profession. But when you believe you didn't do anything wrong, you don't want to have a knee-jerk reaction and leave." The KBA's current president, Jane Winkler Dyche, declined to comment on whether she believes it is appropriate for a president to serve while facing pending bar charges. The KBA's duties include hearing disciplinary charges against lawyers. Its board, including its president, hears appeals of sanctions recommended by hearing officers. Membership in the KBA, an agency of the Kentucky Supreme Court, is mandatory. The LBA, Kentucky's oldest bar association, is a voluntary group to which about 80 percent of Louisville's lawyers belong. Fernandez settles estate Sanders, who with her husband, Col. Harland Sanders, built Kentucky Fried Chicken from two restaurants in 1952 to more than 600 in 1964, when they sold it, left a gross estate of about $4 million when she died at age 94. Her will called for the estate to be divided into 12 shares -- 11 for her siblings or their descendants, and the 12th divided between Sue Bennett College and what is now the University of the Cumberlands. One of the beneficiaries, a niece, Maria Hale of London, Ky., began raising questions about administration of the estate in 2000. She and other heirs alleged that Fernandez violated the terms of the will by exempting the colleges from paying taxes on their share, which reduced payments to the other beneficiaries by a combined $109,000. They also challenged her fee. The Shelby District Court approved the settlement but the descendants sued, alleging, in the words of their lawyer, Robert Marshall, that Fernandez "violated almost every fiduciary duty." "The money really wasn't the point," said Hale, 67, a house cleaner who lives in London, Ky. In 2006 Circuit Judge Charles R. Hickman found that Fernandez failed to follow the terms of the will in exempting the colleges from paying taxes. He also ruled that she charged a fee "well in excess of the statutory maximum" without providing an itemized accounting, without advance approval and without demonstrating that the work performed was "extraordinary and unusual." The court also found that she improperly billed both for work as executor and as attorney for the estate. It said she billed most of her fees to a trust and a realty company owned by Sanders for which she did minimal work, "which had the effect, whether intended or not, of concealing fees from district court review." In a 3-0 ruling, the Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling, saying it found it "troublesome" that Fernandez only disclosed $7,227 of her $175,000 fee to the district court. "Intentionally perpetrating a scheme that conceals from the ... court and any other interested observer the true nature of the fees charged is ill-advised and professionally suspect," the Court of Appeals said. The court sent the case back to circuit court to determine damages and to consider whether to remove Fernandez as executor. Asking for a rehearing, Fernandez and her lawyers said she told Hale her fee and never intended to conceal it. She said she earned her fee and cited detailed billings for at least $141,000. She also said that an accountant, now deceased, recommended billing services to the real estate company because it would provide tax benefits to the estate, and that a trust advisory committee approved the payments. "I had no intention of hiding anything," Fernandez testified in court. "It never even occurred to me." In an interview, Fernandez, a past president of the Women Lawyers Association of Jefferson County, said she has handled hundreds of estates without incident. "This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," she said. Allegations against Bonar The allegations against Bonar surfaced during the trial of a lawsuit she filed against prominent Cincinnati attorney Stan Chesley, in which she alleged she was owed as much as half the $18.5 million in legal fees from the $84 million settlement struck in 2006 of the class action case against the Diocese of Covington. After a 2 day bench trial in Boone Circuit Court, McGinnis ruled that Bonar was entitled to none of the fees because of ethical violations that included settling her own cases while she was counsel for the class. "Bonar either failed or refused to understand or recognize that, when an attorney acts as class counsel, her duty is to the class, to the exclusion of individual clients," McGinnis said in a written opinion. Bonar collected $1.3 million in legal fees from individual clients who didn't join the class. Bonar said she has appealed McGinnis' ruling and disputes his conclusions about her conduct. "Judge McGinnis is not in charge of ethical conduct in Kentucky," she said. Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189.
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