Disbarred Attorney Had Earlier Brush With Embezzlement

Four years before attorney David Cecil would come under scrutiny for stealing from clients, he and his former law firm were sued over accusations that a partner embezzled his clients’ money.

A federal judge in 2003 found that Cecil, then with the Grundy, Va., law firm Robertson, Cecil, King & Pruitt, was innocent of his partner’s misdeeds but still liable for the partner maintaining to the firm’s insurance company that he knew of nothing that could result in a claim.

That 2003 case, in which the insurance company successfully rescinded its coverage, provides an ironic backdrop to Cecil’s late September disbarment for mishandling a client’s estate, and his pending criminal charges in Buchanan County.

In 1999, attorney Ronald King filled out an insurance policy questionnaire on behalf of his law firm, telling TIG Insurance Co. that he had no knowledge of any “wrongful acts, errors or omissions” that could subject the firm to lawsuits, according to federal court records. Two months later, King died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and several of his clients came forward claiming that he stole from them, the records show.

One couple accused King of pocketing a $78,000 insurance settlement from 1996. A coal corporation claimed King misappropriated $55,000 in settling a tax dispute. And a family charged that King, while serving as executor for their relative’s estate, skimmed off nearly $200,000 for his personal use between 1993 and 1997.

The last case is strikingly similar to recent charges against Cecil, who had established his own practice and was disbarred amid allegations that he stole at least $200,000 from a client’s estate between 2006 and 2008. Buchanan County court records show that Cecil faces criminal charges involving the embezzlement of $120,000 from an unnamed estate between February 2007 and March 2008.

A Virginia State Bar disciplinary committee charged that Cecil took excessive attorney’s fees for administering the estates of a prominent Buchanan County doctor and his wife, failed to communicate his fees to their heirs and neglected to maintain accounting records. The committee determined that Cecil committed a “criminal or deliberately wrongful act” and that he engaged in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

Efforts to contact Cecil and his defense attorney were unsuccessful.

Cecil admitted to the State Bar that he had charged excessive legal fees during a period in which he was very ill, according to State Bar records.
In 2003, Cecil had been close to his law partner’s misdeeds, but a judge concluded he was innocent of them.

“It is clear,” U.S. District Court Judge James P. Jones wrote in an opinion, that Cecil and another partner “were innocent of King’s criminal acts. They and King’s innocent clients surely deserve our sympathy.”

Nevertheless, Jones held, “an innocent person is liable for his partner’s misconduct.”

Ruling that the law firm’s insurance company was entitled to rescind coverage, Jones concluded, “It is not unjust that King’s partners – those who had the opportunity to know him best – should bear the loss.”

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