Marijuana.com, March 18, 2015:
“Case in point: a lawyer in New London, Connecticut let a two ounce sack of marijuana slip form his pocket to the floor while in court yesterday. The best part? The lawyer, 46-year-old Vincent J. Fazzone, was in court representing a client, claims the weed wasn’t even his.”
The article, quoting from the Hartford Courant, indicates that the attorney claimed that the pot belonged to his client.
There are a number of ethics issues. If the weed was payment from the client for advanced services, it should have been escrowed in a Bar-approved escrow silo or warehouse with appropriate warehouse receipts showing the client, date and gram weight of the drop – to protect the weed against the attorney’s own creditors, IRS levy on the client’s chronic, etc. [Kidding. Sort of.] The attorney also had a duty to keep the weed entrusted to him from harm; exposing a client’s BC Bud to the greedy hands of the Sheriff would seem to violate ethics rule 1.16. [Kidding. Sort of.]
If the weed became the property of the attorney in a value-for-value representation-for-mowiewowie swap, there needed to be a document to track the earn and a formal removal of the stankweed from trust to operating account, wherein it would be then taxed as in-kind income. Under current IRS regulation, the Treasury of the United States prefers currency or checks drawn on the same, rather than 28% of the actual ganja.
No, I do not consume marijuana.
