⚖️ WOWZA-Bar Discipline: Frivolous Lawsuit & Summary Judgment | FL Bar v. Rakusin | SC18-562

Looking for more Florida probate appeal decisions and oral arguments? ▶    • Florida Probate Appeals | Oral Arguments &...   Florida Supreme Court Oral Argument | The Florida Bar v. Rakusin | Case No. SC18-562 Argued October 2, 2019. In this attorney disciplinary case, The Florida Bar accused Stephen Bruce Rakusin of ethical violations arising from his filing of a frivolous complaint/sham pleading in 2009. The underlying lawsuit was struck by the trial court and Rakusin was sanctioned approximately $41,000 in attorney's fees under § 57.105, Fla. Stat. The referee recommended disbarment. Rakusin previously received a 90-day suspension in 2016. Key issues argued before the court: (1) whether the bar disciplinary complaint was barred by the statute of limitations, specifically whether the discovery rule (known or should have been known) was triggered at the time the lawsuit was filed or later; (2) whether summary judgment was proper in a bar disciplinary proceeding where Rakusin's affidavit created a conflict on the issue of good faith; and (3) whether disbarment was the appropriate sanction. Kevin Tinan argued for Rakusin; Linda Gonzalez argued for The Florida Bar. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚖️ RULES CITED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Rule 4-8.3 – Reporting Professional Misconduct: https://floridarules.net/rules-of-pro... • Rule 4-3.1 – Meritorious Claims and Contentions: https://floridarules.net/rules-of-pro... • Rule 4-8.4 – Misconduct: https://floridarules.net/rules-of-pro... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📋 CASES CITED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Florida Bar v. Rakusin, SC18-562 (Fla. 2020): https://supremecourt.flcourts.gov/cas... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📜 STATUTES CITED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • § 57.105, Fla. Stat. – Attorney's fees; sanctions for filing frivolous pleadings #FloridaSupremeCourt #OralArgument #FloridaBar #AttorneyDiscipline #Disbarment #FrivolousLawsuit #LegalEthics #SummaryJudgment #SC18-562 #Florida #LawyerDiscipline