Montgomery County divorce attorney disbarred for ‘intentional dishonesty’

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A Montgomery County divorce lawyer was disbarred Friday after the Maryland Supreme Court found he engaged in a pattern of misconduct “riddled with deceit and intentional dishonesty.”

Spencer Michael Hecht, founding attorney at Rockville-based Hecht & Associates, had been the subject of three Attorney Grievance Commission complaints from different clients. He reportedly lost a copy of a client’s postnuptial agreement, misrepresented the status of discovery in another matter and made an unauthorized charge to a third client’s credit card — and did not issue refunds to two of the clients until after they filed complaints.

Justice Shirley M. Watts also wrote in the high court’s opinion that Hecht also engaged in bad-faith obstruction of his attorney discipline proceeding by providing “ever-changing and conflicting accounts” about whether a purported expert’s report at the center of one complaint had actually been prepared in one case. He instead shifted the blame to his clients, saying that his former client in that matter had been “untruthful” about not receiving the expert report even though he knew it didn’t exist.

“His conduct during the representation of his three clients — along with his responses to Bar Counsel and his testimony before this Court — demonstrated an unfortunate character trait by which he says whatever he thinks, at that moment, will avoid conflict or consequences,” Circuit Judge J. Bradford McCullough found after a three-day disciplinary proceeding in Montgomery County.

Asked by The Daily Record whether he’d like to respond to the high court’s decision, Hecht said he was “undecided.” Michael L. Rowan of Ethridge, Quinn, Kemp, Rowan & Hartinger, who represented Hecht up until oral arguments in December, did not return a request for comment.

After losing a client’s signed postnuptial agreement, which the client said was a condition of dropping his divorce action, Hecht proceeded with dismissing the divorce case, according to the court opinion. When the client asked about a month later for a copy of the agreement, Hecht did not tell him that it was still missing, and he continued to conceal it later by telling his client it was still “valid and I will get you a copy.”

Once Hecht admitted that it was still missing, his client asked for a refund of the $2,400 Hecht had billed for drafting it, according to the opinion. Hecht responded by saying a refund was “not a reasonable option.” He sent a check about a year later, after the client had filed a complaint, with a letter stating that he had decided to refund the fee because his client “informed the peer review panel that he never kept a copy of the document.”

Hecht had reportedly told the second client that he was working on a motion to compel in her divorce proceedings after she had “clearly asked,” though he later testified that there was no motion and that her follow-up email asking about its status “was delusional.” She also paid Hecht $5,000 for an expert witness he said was going to prepare a report, though no report existed, and Hecht ignored repeated emails from the client about the status of the report. Hecht withdrew from the case before the start of the trial, citing a “breakdown in communication” with his client.

The court also found that after Hecht withdrew from the case, he signed an affidavit for opposing counsel that was harmful to his former client. In the affidavit, Hecht wrote that his client said she needed a postponement due to the “voluminous documentation she had been provided that she had not yet reviewed.”

The third matter involved a client whose credit card Hecht charged $7,500 after the client said he was hiring new counsel. When the client asked about the charge, Hecht replied that the fee was a “a modest replenishment” because he spent “an incredible amount of time” on the case that weekend. Hecht did not refund the client until about three years later, after an unsuccessful bid for a resolution with the Bar Association of Montgomery County’s Committee on the Resolution of Fee Disputes.

McCullough found eight aggravating factors, including Hecht’s prior disciplinary history, a “dishonest or selfish” motive, deceptive practices during the attorney discipline proceeding and Hecht’s refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of the misconduct. The Maryland Supreme Court found two more: his indifference to making restitution or rectifying the misconduct’s consequences and the likelihood of repetition of the misconduct.

Hecht had “no defensible position for refusing” the first and third clients’ refunds, Watts wrote in her opinion.

“In light of the numerous instances and wide range of intentional dishonesty throughout Mr. Hecht’s representation of three clients, the harm to the clients, and Mr. Hecht’s unwillingness to acknowledge the wrongfulness of his conduct, disbarment is necessary to protect the public,” she wrote.