Lawyer faces 3-year license suspension Editor's note: This is why the crooked judges in the Probate Court of Cook County are allowed to continue their corruptions. Honest lawyers are punished and removed.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com May 15, 2013 By John Flynn RooneyLaw Bulletin staff writer An attorney who questioned the integrity and fairness of four judges should lose his law license for three years and until further court order, a lawyer-discipline panel recommended. The Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission Hearing Board found 'Lanre O. Amu knowingly made false statements or statements with reckless disregard for the truth. "Given the respondent's lack of remorse, failure to understand the wrongfulness of his misconduct and inclination to personalize adverse rulings, we are concerned that he will be unable to conform his future conduct to professional standards," the hearing board report says. The ARDC administrator filed a four-count complaint against Amu in December 2011 asserting that he made statements about the integrity of four judges that were false or made with reckless disregard as to their truth or falsity. Amu represented clients in two personal-injury cases, a medical-malpractice action and a legal-malpractice lawsuit. Those cases were before then-Cook County Circuit Judges Francis J. Dolan and Thomas R. Chiola, along with Circuit Judges Lynn M. Egan and Irwin J. Solganick. The four judges all made rulings adverse to Amu's clients. Amu asserted that Dolan's ruling in a personal-injury case barring all the plaintiff's witnesses was improper and attacked the judge's integrity and fairness. "Although respondent testified for over a day (before the hearing board), he failed to offer any evidence to substantiate his statements," the panel's report says. "Rather the evidence demonstrates that respondent's statements were based on speculation and conjecture derived from Judge Dolan's adverse ruling." In February 2009, Chiola granted a defense motion for partial summary judgment in a legal-malpractice case in which Amu represented the plaintiff. Amu then filed an appeal with the 1st District Appellate Court and made "reckless misrepresentations" about Chiola in two briefs, the hearing board report says. In 2009, Egan vacated a default judgment against a defendant in a personal-injury case in which Amu represented the plaintiff. In late 2010, the 1st District Appellate Court upheld Egan's ruling. In March 2011, Amu prepared and posted a 23-page document on his website and mailed the letter to judges, public officials and the ARDC. The letter maintained that Egan and appellate court justices engaged in collusion and corruption. But the hearing board called the accusations "baseless." In the case involving Solganick, Amu filed a request for admission seeking that one of the defendants admit more than 1,000 individual facts in May 2009. The next month, Solganick entered an order granting the defendants' motion to strike Amu's request for admission. In August 2009, a jury returned a verdict in the defendants' favor. In a court document filed later that year, Amu questioned Solganick's integrity. In December 2010, Amu filed a motion for an authentic independent investigation into corruption accusations with the Illinois Appellate Court. Amu "was unable to offer any concrete evidence to support his statements regarding Judge Solganick," says the hearing board report. Amu, who represented himself before the hearing board, testified that he "stands by [his] statements," and his statements were 100 percent correct, the report says. Amu also called his statements "courageous." The ARDC administrator's office urged that Amu be disbarred. The hearing board disagreed. "While we recognize respondent's misconduct is serious and deserving of substantial discipline, we do not believe disbarment, the harshest possible sanction, would better advance the goals of the disciplinary system," says the hearing board report, which was issued last week. "We do, however, believe a three-year suspension is necessary to impress upon respondent the wrongfulness of his misconduct and deter future misconduct." As for the suspension-until-further-court-order condition, the report says, "We are confident this hurdle is necessary for respondent because he continues to view his conduct as not only acceptable but necessary, lacks remorse and has demonstrated throughout these disciplinary proceedings that he will likely continue to engage in the same course of conduct whenever he believes he has been treated unfairly." The hearing board consisted of its chair, Debra J. Braselton(pictured at left), Andrea D. Rice and Donald D. Torisky, a non-lawyer. In the matter of Lanre O. Amu, No. 2011 PR 00106. Amu, 51, and an African immigrant, became an Illinois lawyer in 1996. Amu said the ARDC is "abusing its processes" and he plans to file exceptions to the hearing board report with the ARDC Review Board, an appellate tribunal. "What they have done there is a miscarriage of justice," he said. "I reject it completely." ARDC Deputy Administrator James J. Grogan declined to comment about the hearing board report.

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