SPRINGFIELD – Justices of the Illinois Supreme Court suspended Belleville lawyer Paul Storment, Jr., 83, for a year on May 18.
The high court adopted a report finding he handled client funds carelessly and made false statements to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
Justices imposed five months on full suspension and seven months on probation.
They chose not to hear from commission administrator Jerome Larkin, who recommended disbarment.
Justice Lloyd Karmeier took no part.
The Illinois Bar admitted Storment in 1963.
In 1992, Missouri disbarred him for advising a client to lie in court.
The Illinois Supreme Court suspended him for two years.
After his suspension he arranged to share a fee in Missouri, leading to another suspension for two years in 2005.
His casual treatment of client funds caught up with him in 2017, when a $3,500 check from a trust account bounced at Regions Bank.
The bank notified the attorney commission, which sent the bank’s report to Storment and requested explanation.
He sent a letter stating he transferred money back into that account.
The commission asked for additional records, and Storment sent records with a letter stating he immediately corrected the problem.
Senior investigator James Burton examined trust accounts and found Storment regularly broke rules.
In May 2018, Larkin filed a complaint charging Storment converted client funds and made false statements in his letters.
They presented the case to a hearing board in March 2019, with John L. Gilbert of Sandberg Phoenix in Edwardsville presiding as chairman.
The board recommended a year last June, finding no intentional conversion.
“Conversion can, but does not always, entail dishonesty,” the board’s report stated.
The hearing board pinned the letters on a secretary they didn’t name, though they found Storment acted with reckless disregard for truth when he signed them.
It found he didn’t know how to use a Quicken accounting system in his office and delegated such tasks to the secretary.
It also found “various inaccuracies, discrepancies and omissions” between Quicken records and Regions Bank records, and found items weren’t entered correctly or correlated with client matters.
“While we do not excuse Respondent’s conduct, we saw his failings as negligent rather than dishonest,” the hearing board’s report stated.
The board wasn’t convinced he knew he took more than he was entitled to receive.
“Rather, it seemed at least equally likely that Respondent was estimating what he was due and taking that amount without checking to confirm,” the report stated.
“There was also a rough correlation between the amount to which Respondent was entitled and the amount he took.”
The board found no evidence that Storment had financial problems.
“He now understand that, when money is in the trust account, he must be sure to pay everyone who is owed money and get to a zero balance,” the report stated.
“Disbarment does not automatically follow simply because an attorney has been disciplined more than once before.”
The board found his prior discipline remote in time.
Larkin appealed, and a review board affirmed the hearing board this January.
The review board found the issue wasn’t whether they disagreed with the hearing board’s conclusions or might have reached a different conclusion as triers of fact.
“Rather, we defer to the factual findings of the hearing board, and will not disturb them unless they are against the manifest weight of the evidence,” the review board’s report stated.
Larkin petitioned the Supreme Court for leave to file exceptions to the hearing board’s report, and the Justices denied it as they entered their order.