An attorney in Ohio had his licensed suspended on Tuesday for trying to get a female client to sleep with him.
Ed Bunstine allegedly told a female client in July 2010 that she could pay her legal fees in a child custody matter by stripping down nude. Bunstine asked the woman if he could come to her home and she could answer the door naked. Bunstine claimed he only “asked a question for the purpose of hearing the response.”
The woman said she was disgusted and quickly left Bunstine's office. But Bunstine called her and asked if he could come over to her house. She said no, but Bunstine drove to her home anyway.
Rather than being confronted by a naked woman, Bunstine was confronted by the woman's fiance and her fiance's father when he arrived.
The woman ended up allowing Bunstine to represent her at an upcoming hearing, but only because she didn't have the time to find a new lawyer, she said. Bunstine was replaced by a new lawyer within weeks.
Bunstine told the Ohio Supreme Court that it was unreasonable of the woman to assume that he "wanted her to answer the door naked so that [they] could, thereafter, engage in sexual activity." The justices on the state's highest court disagreed.
"The above facts provide clear and convincing evidence that Bunstine violated" Ohio's Rules of Professional Conduct, they wrote in their ruling (PDF).
Bunstine’s license was suspended for a year, with six months of the suspension stayed on the condition that he commit no further misconduct.
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