Fifth Opinion’s The Finale

Moving in the same direction

In re Phyllis McCoy-Jacien, 2020 VT 42

By Elizabeth Kruska

As you may recall, we here at SCOV Law covered a series of four attorney disciplinary opinions related to Phyllis McCoy-Jacien. If you’d like to read the series—and you should—you can find it here.

Here’s Act V.

As we’ve talked about before, attorneys are a licensed profession in Vermont and in other states. Let’s suppose an attorney is licensed in State A and State B. If an attorney has a disciplinary issue in State B, State A will generally impose the same discipline outcome as did State B.

Here, the respondent was licensed in both Vermont and New York. She faced a disciplinary case in each state. New York filed a petition for disbarment, and the respondent didn’t respond or contest it. As a result, she ended up being disbarred in New York.

Since Vermont imposes reciprocal discipline, and Vermont saw no reason not to impose a reciprocal disciplinary sanction, Vermont also disbarred the respondent.

That’s it. That’s the case.