In a bizarre personal bankruptcy case back in 2001 in Louisiana, with ramifications for us here today, a lawyer and a judge conspired to commit fraud. This got the lawyer suspended and the federal judge convicted of a crime and removed from the bench! Apparently when federal judge Gabriel Thomas Porteous sought counsel from bankruptcy attorney Claude Lightfoot for debt relief under the bankruptcy act, Attorney Lightfoot concocted a plan to file the personal bankruptcy under the name “Ortous, G.T.” and then, the next day, amended the bankruptcy petition to “Gabriel Thomas Porteous,” in a rouse to avoid the judge’s name from going into the local newspaper. When asked, Attorney Lightfoot misled the Trustee in Bankruptcy, saying that the reason for the amendment was “typos.”
Ironically, the newspaper figured it out a few months later and exposed the scheme. After a hearing by the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, Attorney Claude Lightfoot was suspended from the practice of law for six months, with all but 30 days deferred. Attorney Lightfoot was found responsible for counseling “a client to engage in…conduct that a lawyer knows is fraudulent.”
The House of Representatives impeached Judge Porteous, a/k/a Ortous, and the United States Senate removed him from his position as a federal judge; it was only the eighth federal judge removal. It was the first impeachment trial since the acquittal of Bill Clinton. Apparently he was also charged with taking money from attorneys and bail bondsman who had cases before him. His attorney stated that he had the derivation of the problem was a gambling addiction.