Gassaway will defend himself today
Here is the latest on this attorney:
Gassaway to defend himself at OBA panel today
October 9, 2007
OKLAHOMA CITY – It is Oklahoma City attorney Mike Gassaway’s turn to present defense evidence to an Oklahoma Bar Association panel beginning Tuesday.
The bar association is asking the Oklahoma Supreme Court to discipline Gassaway for violations of several professional responsibility rules attorneys are required to follow. State law gives the court a range of possible disciplinary options, including disbarment.
Among other allegations, the bar group accuses Gassaway of engaging “in a predatory pattern of sexual misconduct” by soliciting oral sex from a client’s girlfriend in exchange for reducing the man’s attorney fees, and by coercing another client’s wife into performing oral sex because she feared her husband would lose his dental license.
The bar complaint also alleges that Gassaway pressured a woman undergoing a child-custody hearing to have sex with him in exchange for his continued legal representation in her case. According to the complaint, the woman and her second husband came up with an additional $500 out of fear that she would lose her children and go to jail or be forced to have sex with him.
Another count alleges that Gassaway took a retainer from a woman in a divorce case, then told her that if she would give him oral sex, he would get “right on” her case. The woman, who said she left the lawyer’s office, alleged that his pants were undone at the time. The bar complaint accuses Gassaway of not taking any legal action in the case, while not refunding any of the retainer. It is also alleges that in a 1997 divorce case, Gassaway engaged in sex with another woman who said she did not have money to retain an attorney.
Gassaway is also accused of forging another attorney’s name to a letter to the bar association, signing an assistant district attorney’s name to documents in a probation case, failing to file another client’s appeal in a case and neglecting to file a harassment lawsuit against Oklahoma City for another client, after meeting with the client for more than two years, among other allegations.
Bar association attorneys presented evidence before the panel last month. Attorneys on both sides of the bar disciplinary action are prohibited from discussing the case due to a gag order.
For more information about Gassaway:
http://www.okctalk.com/okc-metro-are...light=gassaway
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