Law: Go-between Expelled

When the late Alexander Berg, wealthy St. Louis fur dealer, was kidnapped in November 1931, his abductors forced him to sign a letter appointing one Paul A. Richards, St. Louis criminal lawyer, as go-between. To Lawyer Richards the kidnapped man was forced to send a promissory note for $50,000 to be converted into cash and paid to the abductors after Berg’s release. Lawyer Richards went immediately to Berg’s attorney, Morris Levinson, demanded $11,000 for his proposed services on behalf of the kidnapped man—$1,000 to be paid immediately, $10,000 when Berg was released. Levinson. who felt that Richards knew altogether too much about the kidnapping, played along with him until Berg was released, then reported him to the police. Before any ransom had been paid, Richards was arrested. He got himself acquitted in a St. Louis court seven months later, only to find that the Missouri and St. Louis Bar Associations were prepared to run him out of the profession. To save time, the Bar Associations took their case direct to the State Supreme Court. They had evidence indicating that Richards had victimized the frightened Berg family into the promise to pay him the $10,000, and that he had also planned to collect money from the kidnappers. Supreme Court Judge Frank E. Atwood listened to the testimony last May, took the entire summer to prepare his decision. Last week he announced it. In an 11,000-word judgment, unanimously concurred in by the court, he ordered Richards’ license revoked for professional malpractice. The Atwood decision may make legal history. The specific point at issue was whether the Missouri Supreme Court had original jurisdiction in the case. Richards’ attorneys claimed that it did not, that it had power to adjudicate only those disbarment cases which came up through the lower courts. Judge Atwood denied this allegation, used it as a point of departure for a broad and far-reaching decision. He declared that the power of disbarment exists in the judicial branch of the Government, independent of any constitutional or statutory grant. Said he: “It is not always easy to determine what objects are naturally within the range or orbit of a particular department of government, but it will scarcely be denied that a primary object essentially within the orbit of the judicial department is that courts properly function in the administration of justice . . . and in the light of judicial history they cannot long continue to do this without power to admit and disbar attorneys who from time immemorial have in a peculiar sense been regarded as their officers.”