By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
The Florida Bar was humiliated Tuesday in its politically charged prosecution of an attorney who publicly challenged Gov. Ron DeSantis’s pandemic policy.
The Bar referee handling Daniel Uhlfelder’s disciplinary case recommended the lightest possible punishment for his technical violation of ethics rules: admonishment.
Uhlfelder admitted he didn’t communicate enough with his co-counsels about their participation in an appeal. The referee, Taylor County Circuit Judge Gregory Parker, wrote: “I find that this failure was, at most, negligent.”
Admonishment is the lowest level of discipline under Bar rules. It recognizes an attorney’s minor misconduct, becomes part of their Bar record, and serves as a warning that future lapses could bring harsher sanctions.
It does not, however, stop or even pause their practice of law.
The Bar wanted Uhlfelder’s license suspended for 91 days, which would have required him to reapply for admission, and be accepted, in order to resume practicing law again. Licensed in 1998, he has an unblemished record as a family and real estate lawyer in Santa Rosa Beach.
Now the referee’s recommendation goes to the ultra-conservative Florida Supreme Court, the overseer and ultimate regulator of Florida lawyers. The justices, most of whom were appointed by Republican DeSantis, must decide to accept or reject Judge Parker’s recommendation.
Scott Tozian, the Tampa lawyer who leads Uhlfelder’s defense, said he expects the court “to approve the recommendation of the referee as the report was factually detailed and he justified his recommendation by referral to the rules and case law.
“While there’s no such thing as an air-tight order, the findings that he made are certainly well documented.”
DESANTIS CRITIC AS ‘GRIM REAPER’
Uhlfelder first came to public attention in 2020 when he dressed up as “the Grim Reaper” and strode across beaches that DeSantis refused to close to the public. National media took note of the DeSantis critic while Florida’s COVID-19 death toll spiked. But his troubles with the Bar began when he sued the governor over pandemic policy, lost, then appealed.
When the First District Court of Appeal tossed Uhlfelder’s case, it also asked the Bar to determine whether he should be sanctioned for appealing a “frivolous” lawsuit.
A Bar grievance committee and the Florida Bar Board of Governors recommended leniency, which would have meant his mandatory attendance at an ethics class instead of discipline. But the Supreme Court rejected that recommendation and directed the grievance committee to take another look at Uhlfelder’s behavior.
Bar counsel got the message, and after a second investigation, a complaint was filed alleging Uhlfelder violated rules against misconduct, “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” and “conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.” The Bar also alleged he broke another rule requiring “candor toward the tribunal.”
Over the past five-plus years, Uhlfelder received an unusual outpouring of support from other lawyers and the judiciary.
Two of his character witnesses were U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks and R. Fred Lewis, a former justice of the Florida Supreme Court. At a hearing in September both savaged the Bar’s case. Middlebrooks went so far as to say he was “dismayed” by the proceeding.
Parker wrote that he took their testimony, along with others who spoke out for Uhlfelder, into account in reaching his decision. “These witnesses collectively testified” about Uhlfelder’s “good moral character and professional ability.”
In contrast, Bar prosecutors called no witnesses to support their argument that Uhlfelder was the kind of lawyer who would commit “fraud” upon a tribunal.
Notably, last month former Florida Bar president Henry “Hank” Coxe argued a motion before Parker on behalf of Uhlfelder. He alleged the Bar prosecutors “cheated” at Uhlfelder’s ethics trial by failing to reveal they were centering their case on tainted witnesses – Uhlfelder’s former co-counsels Marie Mattox and Gautier Kitchen, who had their own Bar ethics problems.
Lead Bar counsel Shanee Hinson accused Uhlfelder’s lawyers of trying to “manufacture exculpatory evidence where none exists” and shift blame from their client to the Bar to “delay the inevitable.”
Parker recently denied Coxe’s motion to find the Bar committed prosecutorial misconduct, but that did not turn out to be a harbinger of his final recommendation. He ordered Uhlfelder to pay $7,447.40 in costs incurred by the Bar.
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