State Bar is investigating allegations of misconduct against the chairman of the NHC commission; possible criminal investigation

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WILMINGTON, North Carolina (WECT) – When Gary Holyfield tragically lost his 16-year-old daughter in a car crash on I-140, he turned to Julia Olson-Boseman, a certified lawyer and chair of the Council of Commissioners of New Hanover County, to help settle a $ 30,000 insurance claim for his death.

After helping Holyfield put his daughter’s affairs in order, Boseman offered to take her case one step further: bring a wrongful death lawsuit against the state of North Carolina.

When Boseman offered his services to the tune of $ 20,000, which she called a retainer, Holyfield accepted and wrote Boseman a check for the full amount on February 3, 2020, according to a grievance he filed with the NC State Bar.

Now, nearly a year and a half after paying Boseman $ 20,000, Holyfield says he cannot get a recall from his lawyer and that no lawsuits have been filed against the state on behalf of his girls. A WECT investigation also found no evidence of a filing against the state.

Bosemans’ Market Street office has been vacated and a new business is already in its place. In an email to WECT, Boseman said she retired earlier this year and no longer practices law.

But Holyfield says he’s never been told that Boseman is no longer practicing law and has a lot of questions, perhaps more importantly, he wants to know why.

Left with no other options, Holyfield filed an official grievance with the North Carolina State Bar and a police report with the Wilmington Police Department for obtaining property under false pretenses. Although Boseman’s name is not directly mentioned in the report, his former office is listed as the address where the incident occurred.

The police report filed by Gary Holyfield (.)

According to District Attorney Ben David, the State Bureau of Investigation is currently aware of the pending complaints and is ready to investigate the allegations against Boseman if the State Bar identifies a criminal element in the case.

A spokesperson for the Wilmington Police Department confirmed that the matter is now in the hands of the SBI, but declined to comment further. The SBI did not immediately return a request for comment.

The crash

In April 2019, Brittany Holyfield and her 7-year-old brother were driving with their mother on I-140 when their car hydroplaned and pulled off the road at a culvert. Brittany and her brother died in the crash.

After the accident, Holyfield hired Boseman as an attorney to sue the mother’s insurance company, ultimately receiving $ 30,000. Boseman took $ 10,000 as a fee.

Paying the insurance would have helped pay for funerals and other expenses, but for Holyfield it wasn’t just about money. Instead, he wanted two things: enough money to buy two tombstones and some type of safety measure in place so that no one else had to go through what he had to go through.

When I go there to pay my respects I want a nice gravestone for her and CJ, Holyfield said.

In order to take legal action against the state in the hope that guardrails will be installed at the crash site, Boseman said she needed more money. Holyfield’s contract with Boseman was to pay him $ 20,000 for his services. This money came from the balance paid by the insurance company for the death of Holyfields’ daughter. Now, more than two years after his death, Holyfield wants answers.

I would like to know where this $ 20,000 was deposited, because if it was deposited into his personal account, professional account or whatever, and you did not do any work to get it, then it was to free money free money at the expense of my daughter’s death. I can’t ride with that no, said Holyfield.

The thing that makes me so mad is that I trusted this woman, continued Holyfield. I really trusted him. I voted for her in politics. I believed in her as a common person, and then take that. I mean, I don’t have much. I am fighting for my little family. How would she like if someone did this to her?

An ongoing investigation

Despite the fact that Boseman has stated that she no longer practices law, the North Carolina State Bar shows that her law degree is still active.

A letter dated June 29, 2021 shows that the NCSB received the grievance from Holyfields on June 21, 2021 and is investigating and reviewing the grievance. The NCSB is the statewide regulatory body for lawyers.

The North Carolina State Bar was established in 1933 by the North Carolina General Assembly as the government agency responsible for regulating the legal profession in North Carolina. The state bar currently regulates over 28,000 licensed lawyers. Protecting the public and protecting our justice system are the goals of regulation, according to the organization’s website.

NCSB responds to complaint (.)

The NCSB not only acts to regulate lawyers, it also holds them accountable.

The primary regulatory responsibility of the state bar is to investigate and prosecute attorneys who violate the state bar lawyer’s code of ethics, the NCSB website says.

Since the NCSB is a state regulator, it is difficult to obtain information on investigations due, in large part, to exemptions in state open registration laws.

As a general rule, grievance procedures are confidential unless the Grievance Board so requires and counsel accepts public discipline, or unless a formal disciplinary complaint is filed with the Board. disciplinary hearing (DHC) against the lawyer. Additional exceptions to the confidentiality rule rarely apply, according to the NCSB.

Questions remain

State attorneys are required to follow the rules of professional conduct, which are set out on the NCSB website. One of the rules, Rule 1.15, describes how lawyers should treat client property. Specifically, it describes how lawyers should maintain a client trust account to ensure that money paid to them by their clients is kept separate from the business or personal account.

Any lawyer who receives funds belonging to a client must keep a trust account. The general rule is that every receipt of money from a client or for a client, which will be used or delivered on behalf of the client, is held in trust and must be placed in the trust account. All client money received by a lawyer, except that to which the lawyer is immediately entitled, must be deposited in a trust account, including funds for payment of future fees and expenses, specifies the rule. .

But, as noted above, there is an exception to the rule: Sometimes a lawyer may be immediately entitled to payments.

According to the contract signed by Holyfield, the money he agreed to pay Boseman went directly to his corporate account and not to a client’s trust account. This is where the rules start to become more nuanced and where the chosen definition of the word comes into play.

Part 12 of the rule reads: Whether a fee prepaid by the customer should be placed in the trust account depends on the fee agreement with the customer. A fee in the proper sense of the word is a payment by the client for the reservation of the exclusive services of the lawyer, which is not used to pay for the legal services provided by the lawyer and, by agreement of the parties, is not not refundable at the discharge of the lawyer. This is a payment to which the lawyer is immediately entitled and, therefore, should not be placed in the trust account.

However, the term restraint is apparently misused enough that the NCSB is breaking the rules further.

A retainer, which is in effect a deposit by the client of an advance payment of fees to be billed on an hourly or other basis, is not a payment to which the lawyer is immediately entitled. It is really a security deposit and must be placed in the trust account. As the lawyer earns the fees or bills against the deposit, the funds must be withdrawn from the account … the rule continues.

Looking at the contract between Holyfield and Boseman, the first part of the fees section indicates that the $ 20,000 was simply intended to retain Bosemans’ services and ensure that she was not representing anyone else in connection with the case. Therefore, she was entitled to the full amount immediately and the money would not be placed in a client’s trust account.

However, the following part of the retained part of the contract is more in line with the second part of the rule regarding holdbacks.

The lawyer will provide legal services to the client on an hourly basis according to the schedule set out in section 1 of this Agreement until the value of such services equals the minimum fees stated in the contract.

Finally, the rules require that a lawyer reimburse any part of the unearned fees.

Rule 1.16 (d) requires reimbursement to the client of any part of the fees that have not been earned by the lawyer at the time the representation is terminated, in accordance with the Rules of Professional Conduct.

But, under Bosemans’ contract, Holyfield would not be entitled to any reimbursement of any part of the minimum charges under any circumstances.

When the lawyer’s representation ends, the client will not be entitled to any reimbursement of any part of the minimum fees, even if the representation ends before the lawyer has provided legal services of equivalent value. minimum fees, unless it can be demonstrated that the minimum fee is clearly an excessive fee in the circumstances, the contract states.

Due to privacy laws, the NCSB does not respond to questions regarding ongoing investigations of state attorneys.

Grievances are not made public unless and until the Grievance Committee decides that a complaint against the defendant lawyer should be filed with the Disciplinary Hearing Board. However, the defendant lawyer will be aware of your grievance, as they will be asked to respond, a spokesperson for the NCSB said.

However, Holyfield provided WECT with a copy of its complaint, along with the letter it received from NCSB confirming that it had received it.

While much of what the NCSB does is administrative, it will report any potential criminal behavior to the appropriate law enforcement agency. In this case, it would probably be the SBI, as mentioned earlier.

Boseman was contacted for comment, but she was unwilling to discuss the matter in depth.

I am not aware of any complaints or police reports that have been filed and I am not free to discuss former clients. I retired from practicing law on January 1 of this year, she said.

But it came as a surprise to Holyfield, who finds himself with more questions than answers.

Why do this because of my daughter’s death, I mean it doesn’t make sense, I can’t believe she would be that type of person, Holyfield said. I’d like to at least hear a guy from Gary, that’s why we were doing what we were doing, that’s where we were at, but I can’t even get it. And that for me, for a father, someone else is profiting from the death of his daughter, that is just not true, it is almost to say that the man of the money of the blood is not fair.

Copyright 2021 WECT. All rights reserved.

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