Report: Interim Lorain County Administrator Rob Weber faced law license suspension

ELYRIA — A disciplinary panel for Ohio attorneys recommended in June a one-year stayed suspension of interim Lorain County Administrator Rob Weber's law license after it determined he mishandled money belonging to clients he represented in private practice between 2016 and 2018. Weber, a licensed attorney, was named interim county administrator on Aug. 18 after Lorain County commissioners fired his predecessor, Tom Williams. Weber, a Republican former candidate for both Congress and the Ohio House of Representatives, had been deputy county administrator since being hired Jan. 4. The Ohio Supreme Court's Board of Professional Conduct found "by clear and convincing evidence, that (Weber) engaged in professional misconduct," according to the panel's findings, made during a March 24 hearing and laid out in board documents available online. The panel recommended to the Ohio Supreme Court that Weber's law license be under stayed suspension for one year on the conditions Weber completes six hours of continuing legal education, refrains from further misconduct and pays the cost of the proceedings. Weber, a Henrietta Township resident, said that the recommendation of a stayed suspension is equivalent to probation in criminal law matters. "When I was starting my firm in 2016, I'd been a lawyer for quite a few years. It was my first time out on my own, and I made some administrative mistakes," he said Friday. "I acknowledged my mistakes, and as soon as I discovered those mistakes I made quick and immediate repairs to those. I take full responsibility for being maybe a little too busy, a little too overwhelmed in running my law office." The Ohio Supreme Court still has the final say over the matter, he noted, and he remains licensed to practice law in Ohio. The complaint The March 24 hearing that led to the disciplinary board's recommendation was based on a complaint first filed in December 2020, according to board records. It involved "alleged violations of the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct" by Weber in the representation of five clients in personal injury cases and his violation of rules governing what's called an IOLTA, according to the panel's findings. IOLTA is an acronym for "interest on lawyers' trust accounts." Established by the Ohio General Assembly in 1985, IOLTA accounts generate interest that then generate revenue for the state's legal aid fund, according to the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation. All lawyers in Ohio who receive client filing fees, retainers or settlements must deposit them in the accounts, like a trust account. Prior to December 2016, Weber spent time with the law firms Hermann Cahn & Schneider, with offices in Cleveland and Oberlin; Lynn A. Lazzaro in Rocky River; and Behrens, Gioffre & Schroeder Co. in Cleveland, according to his public LinkedIn profile and the Board of Professional Conduct. The alleged misconduct dealt primarily with five clients Weber represented in personal injury cases from 2016 to 2018. The Board of Professional Conduct said the first instance of misconduct occurred in August 2016, when client Anna Burgos hired Weber to represent her in a personal injury claim. Burgos' insurance company issued three checks totaling $3,980 through Weber in February 2017. The checks were deposited into Weber's IOLTA account "with each containing what was purportedly the signature of Burgos as an endorsement," according to the board. However, Burgos did not know the checks existed, didn't sign them and didn't authorize anyone to endorse her name on the checks, the board reported. In October 2016, Amber Buckner hired Weber to represent her personal injury claim. Her insurer sent Weber two checks payable to his client totaling $1,000 in April 2017. Weber deposited those checks in his IOLTA, again with "what was purportedly the signature of Bucker as an endorsement." Again, Buckner was not aware of the checks, didn't sign them and didn't authorize anyone to endorse her name, according to the board. Weber shared offices with Gioffre & Schroeder in December 2016, merged his solo practice with that firm in July 2017 and left in December 2017. In March 2017, Twila Hammond hired Weber to represent her injury claim, and her insurance company sent Weber a check for $10,597 that spring. The result was the same: Weber deposited the check with a signature that supposedly belonged to Hammonds, though she was not aware of that check, did not sign it and did not authorize anyone else to sign it on her behalf. In all the cases, Weber "admitted that either he or his employee, at his direction," signed a client's name on the back of the checks, according to board documents. When Weber left Gioffre & Schroeder in December 2017, Burgos, Buckner and Hammond remained behind as the firm's clients, but Weber did not transfer their funds from his IOLTA account to the Gioffre firm. As of Jan. 26, 2018, Weber's IOLTA had less than $15,577 in it, below the combined balance of the checks he had deposited that belonged to the three clients. By March 2018, the IOLTA balance was less than $287, and his clients still had not been paid. The Gioffre & Schroeder firm discovered that the client funds had not been transferred in spring 2018 and contacted Weber. He made three payments in April 2018, making the client funds whole, according to the Board of Professional Conduct, though the firm still filed a grievance against him. The board findings were that Weber's conduct violated two rules of professional conduct against dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation and prompt notification to clients of the receipt and delivery of money due to them. In three other cases the board reviewed: • Client Samuel Wilson received a check for just under $9,084 that Weber put in his IOLTA in February 2017. Weber issued checks for attorney fees and reimbursement of costs, and kept $2,140.50 to pay Wilson's outstanding medical bills. The IOLTA in question had been opened by Weber at PNC Bank a year earlier, and Weber had put $35,000 of his own money into it to create a buffer while checks cleared, the board reported. • Client Asa Knowles received a $45,000 settlement check that Weber deposited into the IOLTA in February 2017, and Weber cut himself a check the following March 10 worth $14,500. Knowles' doctor got another $8,900 check for medical services provided, the board reported. Knowles was owed the remaining $21,600, but Weber didn't cut Knowles a check until January 2018, and then only for $20,100, "leaving a balance owed to Knowles of $1,500," the board reported. Only in May 2020, in response to the Board of Professional Conduct's investigation, did Weber send Knowles a check for the remaining $1,500 — "three years after the check was received and more than two years after the first payment," the board noted. • Sometime before June 10, 2017, Weber deposited a check for client Richard Keuhn and wrote checks worth $2,000 and $6.50 to settle attorney fees and costs. Weber then paid a $2,750 bill to a medical provider, leaving a balance due of just over $2,241 due to Keuhn that Weber didn't pay out to his client until Jan. 9, 2018. Keuhn tried to deposit that check on April 12, 2018, but PNC Bank declined it and notified Weber of an overdraft. The balance in his IOLTA was only $401.36 on that date, the board said. Weber fixed the issue in August 2018 by depositing nearly $2,242 in personal funds to cover the Keuhn check, but only after the Board of Professional Conduct sent him a letter of inquiry, according to board documents. In another instance, Weber deposited a check worth $4,070 for client Luther Clark into his IOLTA in June 2017, then paid out $1,500 to Clark and $1,353 to a medical provider on June 21, 2017. The remaining $1,217 from the Clark check was Weber's fee and reimbursement for costs he advanced to his client, but Weber didn't withdraw those funds from his IOLTA, according to the board. In addition, in April 2018, Weber received and deposited just over $6,184 in fees owed him by the Gioffre law firm for cases he handled while working there. He added $8,000 in personal funds from the IOLTA from a joint bank account in his name and his wife's name three weeks later. At least twice in 2018, the IOLTA fell "below the minimum balance it should have contained for clients," the board reported. By March 15, 2018, the account balance had slipped below $287. The panel found "by clear and convincing evidence" that Weber had violated four rules of professional conduct including those related to keeping client funds separately from his own and keeping proper records. In mitigation, the board found that Weber had no prior disciplinary record, made full restitution to all his clients, made "full and free disclosure to the board," had a "cooperative attitude toward the proceedings" and had a good character or reputation based on witness statements and letters he provided as evidence. Weber "has not had any prior discipline and his conduct had no dishonest or selfish motive," the board wrote. "Although the evidence established that on several occasions the balance in (Weber's) IOLTA fell below the amount of clients' moneys that had been retained from their settlement checks, there is no evidence that it was due to (Weber's) misappropriation of the funds for his own benefit." "Rather, it clearly appears that he simply was not experienced in the management of client funds in an IOLTA prior to starting his own practice," the board wrote. In recommending the stayed suspension, the board wrote that Weber "is no longer actively practicing law by choice" and that the punishment "is similar to that of attorneys who have received fully stayed suspensions for violations" of the rules. Weber "is now employed as the deputy county administrator for Lorain County," the board wrote in its recommendation, issued on June 11. "If he does return to the active practice of law, he does not anticipate returning to the same style of practice." County government Commissioners hired Weber to be County Administrator Tom Williams' deputy at the rate of $43.27 an hour, or $86,540 a year, on Jan. 4. He served in that role until Commissioners Matt Lundy and Michelle Hung voted to fire Williams on Aug. 18. They replaced him with Weber in an interim capacity that same day. Williams ran Commissioner David Moore's 2020 election campaign. Moore voted against firing Williams, against Weber getting the interim post and was against a pay increase for Weber, who is now making about $110,000 annually in the interim role. On Friday, Moore said he was not aware of the Board of Professional Conduct's recommendations. "The board of commissioners was aware of a pending undisclosed issue at the state level," he said. "This is why I was a 'no' vote. At least one of the reasons." "Hung and Lundy fire a county administrator for exposing corruption and replace him with an ethically challenged administrator," Moore added. "You can't make this stuff up." Lundy said he also first became aware of the matter Friday. He plans to sit down with Weber "and discuss it with him to get his version, his side of the story. Beyond that, I don't think there's much more I can say," Lundy said. Commissioner Michelle Hung told The Chronicle on Friday, "I will not have a comment on this due to the fact it has no relevance to his current position and responsibilities." "I will say that regarding Mr. Weber's performance in his current position, he was hired in January and has been delivering consistent and positive results for the residents of Lorain County," she added. Weber ran as a Republican for election in Ohio's 9th Congressional District in 2020 but was defeated by incumbent U.S. Rep Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat. He had never before held elected office and was defeated in his only prior campaign by now-state Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, two years before. According to his 2020 campaign website, Weber, a Portage County native, graduated from Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls in 1991, got his bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1995, and earned an MBA from the University of Louisville in 1999. He left the military in 2000 with the rank of captain and entered legal practice after earning a law degree from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in 2003. Weber's other community service includes being chairman of the board of directors of Goodwill Industries of Lorain County Inc. and serving on the board of directors of the Lorain County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Lorain County, according to his campaign website and his public LinkedIn profile. Weber said he has learned lessons from the mistakes he made, lessons he applied later on in his law practice. None of his clients lost any money, he said, and it was "accounting errors and mistakes with the account of a purely administrative nature" that resulted in the recommended stayed suspension. "I certainly take away the lessons learned and apply those to my everyday life as well as my life as a professional with the county," Weber said. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him @daveobrienCT on Twitter. Read the Board of Professional Conduct report filed with the Supreme Court at https://bit.ly/3lEmF4C.