Attorney Accused of License Violation

County prosecutors have filed four felony counts against Westlake attorney James Joseph Brown III, alleging that he practiced law with a suspended license.

Prosecutors charged Brown with handling two criminal and two civil cases while his license was suspended from July 31, 1995, until Aug. 16 of this year. He allegedly failed to pay dues to the California State Bar Assn. and had not taken required continuing education courses.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Peace said that Brown’s handling of two criminal cases with a suspended license may have violated his clients’ constitutional rights to an attorney.

Brown will be arraigned Oct. 1. If convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of six years in prison.

Brown said that despite being reinstated by the Bar Assn. on Aug. 16 after paying his dues, his office was raided by investigators from the district attorney’s office last Tuesday.

“I’m completely flabbergasted that the district attorney’s office would do something like this, especially after I had been reinstated a month prior,” Brown said.

The charges also came as a shock because he has never been sued for malpractice during his 12 years of practicing law in California and Washington, Brown said.

Brown, who opened his law practice last April after moving from Washington state, acknowledged that he had not paid $3,000 in annual Bar Assn. dues.

“This is a new enterprise: I didn’t have the money,” he said. “It was either pay the Bar Assn. or put a roof over my family’s heads.”