Recall that on Leap Day, we heard about State Farm’s filing, in the Louisiana litigation known as the “Road Home” cases, a motion to disqualify opposing counsel for alleged conflict-of-interest (i.e., their representation of both the state and individual homeowners suing State Farm).
Yesterday — gosh, and we call Mississippi justice slow — some of these “Foti Private Counsel” for the Road Home class responded (38-page pdf). I’ll leave it to the civil-lit practitioners among us to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments, limiting myself to pointing out something that catches my eye as Not Right.
Accompanying their memorandum are a number of exhibits, the seventh of which — a two-page affidavit purportedly by Calvin C. Fayard, Jr. — you see here. Scrolling to the signature on page 2 and keeping it in one window, now please open the window next door to page 4 here — also purportedly the signature of Calvin C. Fayard, Jr.
Do you believe the same hand made those two signatures? Though no handwriting-expert, I think “not likely.”
A correspondent very familiar with Fayard and his signature tells me that, though he frequently has others (secretaries, paralegals, other lawyers) sign his pleadings for him, the second example is much closer to his real signature than the first. This person has also never known Fayard to add the abbreviation “Jr.” when scrawling his name.
Though the “Fayard” signature in Example 1 leans to the left, and the “D. Blayne Honeycutt” signature below it is upright to slightly right-leaning, if I had to bet, I’d bet the same person signed on both lines. Look at the similar sizes of the letters, their similar spikiness, the similar pressure of the similar pen on the paper . . .
Okay now, often while practicing law, I signed documents for missing officemates (a practice common everywhere, no doubt). But always in that situation I signed my name, not the absent author’s, with a big “FOR” (the absentee). As far as I know, it’s ethically impermissible to do otherwise.
Louisianans among us, what (if anything) do your state Bar rules say about this?
I think many people also sign another’s name, placing underneath it “by ___________,” which I assume is permissible as much as I see it.
There are several cases in Louisiana where similar activity involving affidavits was cause for disciplinary action for “lack of candor toward the tribunal” and “knowingly causing harm to the public record and the profession.”
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