Supervising Attorney Receives Slap on the Wrist

How much are supervising attorneys permitted to rely on the work of a subordinate attorney? The answer is, of course, it depends. ABA Litigation Section leaders encourage senior attorneys responsible for the work of others to employ the well-worn Cold War adage of trust but verify.

In the Matter of Kris C. Foster & Others was a disciplinary proceeding that arose out of Committee for Public Counsel Services & Others v. Attorney General & Others, in which the Supreme Judicial Court for the County of Suffolk, Massachusetts, had sought “to remedy egregious governmental misconduct arising out of the scandal at the State Laboratory Institute in Amherst.” The egregious misconduct at issue in the underlying case was the action of several chemists in the state crime lab that ultimately led to the dismissal of nearly 40,000 drug convictions based on tainted lab results. The incident led to a widely viewed four-part documentary series on Netflix, entitled How to Fix a Drug Scandal.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office arrested and prosecuted several of the chemists. During the criminal investigation of one of them, the Attorney General’s Office, through its lead prosecutor, failed to disclose inculpatory evidence against the chemist to other defendants for whom the evidence would have been exculpatory and who were being prosecuted based on the potentially tainted lab results.