Florida Supreme Court, The Florida Bar issue disciplinary action against 9 lawyers

Nine lawyers were disciplined this month for various infractions of conduct in Florida.

The punishment was issued by the Florida Supreme Court, The Florida Bar and its division of Lawyer Regulation. Eight of those lawyers were suspended while one was reprimanded after they were found to have engaged in misconduct, according to a news release from The Florida Bar.

Fort Lauderdale lawyer David Casals was suspended from practice for 30 days after a felony conviction. He was charged with trafficking cocaine, delivery of cocaine and introducing contraband into a county detention facility. He was convicted Sept. 5 and sentenced to 364 days in the Palm Beach County Jail and three years probation. Casals is appealing.

Billy-Joe Hoot Crawford, a lawyer in Panama City, was suspended from practice for a month after a conviction of interference with custody and one count of tampering with a witness in January 2024.

Altamonte Springs lawyer Jeffrey Rice Hussey was also suspended for 30 days following a Nov. 12 court order. He failed to respond to an inquiry from The Florida Bar and a petition for contempt and an order to show cause with the Florida Supreme Court. Hussey did not respond to the requests.

Larry Elliot Klayman, a Boca Raton lawyer, was suspended from practice for two years after a Nov. 5 court order. A news release from The Florida Bar said Klayman became involved in a conflict of interest when he was representing three different cases in litigation against Judicial Watch, a watchdog group that monitors court activity. Klayman founded that organization and was the former general counsel. He also publicized one of the cases despite a client who did not want publicity.

Fort Lauderdale lawyer Marcy S. Resnick  was suspended from practice for 10 days and ordered to attend an ethics school after she pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice and resisting a law enforcement officer without violence.

Joan Marie Powers, a lawyer in Plantation, was suspended for 20 days following appearances she filed in immigration proceedings at the Krome Detention Center. She claimed she would represent her clients in all proceedings in a filing while she claimed her services were only to apply at the detention center. One of her clients was ordered deported after a removal hearing where Powers did not take any further action after the client was released from the center. Powers also took no additional action to withdraw from the cases.

Eduardo Rodriguez, a lawyer in Orlando, was reprimanded by the Board of Governors of The Florida Bar and ordered to complete an ethics school and a professional workshop after he was acting as supervising partner of his law firm permitted retainer and contingency fee contracts along with additional contracts to be notarized without a notary witnessing the signings.

Jennifer Anne Tanck, a St. Petersburg lawyer, was suspended for 30 days after failing to respond to an inquiry from The Florida Bar following a petition and an order to show cause with the Florida Supreme Court.

And Capp P. Taylor, a lawyer from Dandridge, Tennessee, was suspended from practicing in Florida for two years after a separate two-year suspension in that state and he was previously suspended from practice in that state for six months by the Tennessee Supreme Court  in 2017. Taylor did not inform his clients in Florida of his suspensions and other limitations to his representation.