by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

While this column is about metaphorically crossing a river, it has nothing to do with immigration or politics in general. Indeed, the river in question is the Rubicon, not the Rio Grande.

The Rubicon, in case you have forgotten, or never cared in the first place, is a river in Italy that Caesar crossed with armed troops, which amounted to a declaration of war. “Crossing the Rubicon” has morphed into a idiom meaning passing the point of no return.

I mention it because a lawyer in Tennessee named Brian Philip Manookian was found by the Tennessee Supreme Court to have “crossed the Rubicon,” although it took seventy-six pages (which is about the length of this entire magazine) to reach that conclusion.

The essence of the supreme court’s finding was that Mr. Manookian made a “business model of sorts” of intimidating his opposition lawyers based on fear.

In a medical malpractice case, the defense substituted in one C. J. Gideon who, ironically, had fired Mr. Manookian from his firm several years earlier. Mr. Gideon wrote Mr. Manookian what we would call a typical “meet and confer” letter regarding perceived problems with Mr. Manookian’s discovery responses. Mr. Manookian replied by email stating:

I hear [your daughter] is working at [naming her employer]. What a fantastic opportunity,
particularly given her history of academic failure and alcohol and substance abuse.
I happen to have some very close friends at [daughter’s employer].
I will make it a point to see what I can do regarding her prospects there.
I am reminded that it is good for us to keep apprised of each other’s lives and the things we
can do to influence them.

The judge in that case subsequently awarded Mr. Gideon $5,550 in attorney’s fees against Mr. Manookian.

In another case with a different opposing counsel, Phillip North, Mr. Manookian sent an email to Mr. North that listed Mr. North’s home address, the name of his wife, the names of his daughters, and the VIN number and license plate numbers for his wife’s car, none of which “information” had anything to do with the litigation. After several rounds of sanction motions, Judge Ash (a different judge) awarded Mr. North attorneys fees totaling around $50,000 and suspended Mr. Manookian from appearing in Davidson County Circuit Courts for 180 days to run concurrently with a prior sixty-day suspension.

In a hearing before the Bureau of Professional Responsibility, Mr. Manookian confessed that he obtained personal information relating to opposing counsel through an email tracking mechanism that would divulge a physical address that he would then input into a service which would give all publicly available information tied to that address.

The hearing panel filed a report which started off: “Lawyers make mistakes. Some lawyers make numerous mistakes. . . . This matter is not about a lawyer making mistakes. Instead, it is about a lawyer who recklessly accused a judge of being corrupt, repeatedly belittled and degraded opposing counsel, and made a threat against another lawyer’s family.”

That set the stage as succinctly as possible.

The panel concluded “without explanation” that he should be suspended for twenty-four months and complete twelve hours of anger management training.

Mr. Manookian filed a petition for review, which, under Tennessee law, goes to the circuit court in which the petitioning attorney was officed. That trial court said that the panel’s decision not only was not too harsh, but if it had appealed, the trial court would have imposed disbarment.

Mr. Manookian, doubling down on poor judgment, again appealed.

The Tennessee Supreme Court commented that his “matter-of-fact testimony almost made it sound as though using private investigator-level intrusive tools . . . to secretly extract private information to weaponize against opposing counsel is normal business behavior for a lawyer. It is not.” The court found that, “[i]n preying on the families of opposing counsel, Mr. Manookian crossed the Rubicon,” and disbarred him.

In my view, Mr. Manookian passed the point of no return when he appealed the suspension, but it brings to mind Millar’s Corollary #25:

If you see the Rubicon, quit before you get there.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is tired and retired. He can be reached at dickmillar9@gmail.com.