Ah, Florida! A land of sunbaked beaches, a vibrant nightlife, and stupid, stupid lawyers. Let’s visit a couple of the Sunshine State’s finest with this month’s well-tanned Facepalm.
Halloween may be over, but some people are still getting ghosted–specifically all the clients of Jacksonville attorney Ben Buck. Buck has recently been divested of his law license by the Florida Supreme Court after receiving more than 30 (count ’em, 30!) disciplinary complaints about ghosting clients. After the court was forced to ask “Dude, Where’s My Lawyer?” one too many times, Buck was ordered to appear before Judge Robert Arias (an order he, of course, repeated ignored). Once the court finally tracked down this human Snapchat, Judge Arias admonished him, saying his “conduct has tarnished the profession in the eyes not only of your clients, but most importantly the community at large.” Unfortunately for clients of the Invisible Man, their legal fees vanished with him, and we wish them well in their efforts to rematerialize them.
Next, we take a quick drive down I-95 to Tampa, where attorney Kelly Elkins of Treasure Island has been disbarred for misappropriating $25,000 entrusted to her as an escrow agent in a Bitcoin transaction. Now, that’s all well and good, but mere embezzlement does not a Facepalm make. It’s Elkin’s arrest record that really sets her apart. Last year, Elkin was the subject of a drunk-and-disorderly arrest when she disrobed down to her birthday suit in a crowded St. Pete Beach bar. After complaining that the bartender refused to serve her for believing she was overly intoxicated, she decided to prove him wrong by throwing a major psychotic fit ending in her “unclothed and completely naked” by her 2:25 AM arrest. Police told her to get dressed many times, but the denuded diva would only put on a hoodie (and refused to zip it). She then told the officers she was “too tired” to put her pants back on. The day before this sartorial snafu, she was also arrested on a charge of “obtaining food or lodging with intent to defraud,” which I can’t believe is even a thing.
Needless to say, Elkin was, errr…, stripped of her bar membership. Facepalm achieved.