Harrington v. State Bar

THE COURT.

The petitioner herein, Gerald F. Harrington, presented to the committee of bar examiners of The State Bar of California, on May 18, 1928, his application, in due form, for admission to practice as an attorney and counselor in the courts of the state of California, basing the same upon his certificate of admission to practice law in the state of Nebraska, duly issued to him in the year 1913 and unrevoked, and upon a considerable number of commendatory letters from judges, members of the bar and former clients of the petitioner while practicing law in the state of Nebraska between 1913 and 1926. Pursuant thereto the petitioner appeared before the committee of bar examiners on June 1, 1928, and was examined at length by the members thereof, from which it appeared that the applicant, prior to his admission to practice in the state of Nebraska, had received a high school education, followed by a college degree and' two years’ law school study at Creighton University, with one year at Harvard, after which

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he passed the bar examination in Nebraska and took up the practice of the law in Omaha, in which he had continued with apparently considerable success during the succeeding thirteen years. He frankly admitted that he had at one time, and about the year 1917, been named a co-defendant with his father, who was also a lawyer, and with certain other parties, in a criminal proceeding wherein the defendants were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice by secreting a witness in a white slave case, upon the trial of which he was, however, acquitted, the evidence in the' ease disclosing that he had nothing to do with the alleged offense, having been absent from the state at the time of its alleged commission. The record in that case, which was subsequently presented before the board, fully supported the claim of the applicant that he was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing or of any ethical misconduct in respect to that proceeding. In addition thereto, and in response to a letter written by one of the members of the board to the firm of attorneys in Dubuque, Iowa, who had been engaged in the- prosecution of the defendants in that case, a reply was received from the member of that firm who had personally conducted such prosecution and at the close thereof had advised the jury to acquit the applicant herein, and who in his said letter expressly stated that the said charge should not be a bar to his right to practice law in this state, and that the applicant was “a reputable young man of fine appearance and training and he should not be prevented from pursuing his career because of the unfortunate affair in which his father was involved.” At the conclusion of the first hearing before the board of bar examiners that body delegated to Mr. George Stoneman, one of the members, the duty of further examining the record in that case, and this having been done by him he made and filed with said board his report thereon on September 20, 1928, stating that “Prom the record I am unable to see that the application for admission to the bar of this state of Gerald P. Harrington is affected in any manner save unfortunately he became involved through his relationship to his father. I therefore recommend that his application for admission to practice law in this state be granted.” In addition to the foregoing the petitioner herein has presented a letter from Judge Thomas C. Hunger