Dismissal of Serfass

Citations

• 116 Pa. 455
• 9 A. 674
• 1887 Pa. LEXIS 412

Syllabus

<p>1. By admitting an attorney to its Bar, the Court presents him to the public as worthy of its confidence in all of his professional duties and relations. If, afterwards, it come to the knowledge of the Court that • he has become unworthy, it is its duty to withdraw that indorsement and thereby cease to hold him out to the public as worthy of professional employment.</p> <p>2. In proceedings to disbar an attorney, charges were made and established: (1), That he had altered a recorder's receipt for a letter of attorney, so as to make it appear he had paid the recorder’s fee which he had not paid, and had used the altered receipt as evidence of payment . of the fee on the trial of a oause in which he was a party; (2), That, without retainer and without authority, he had appeared for the defendant in a long-summons suit before a justice of the peace and, after examining a witness, moved for and obtained a nonsuit on' the ground that defendant was a non-resident; and afterwards a second suit having been brought by short summons, he had again appeared, produced witnesses, and moved for a nonsuit on the ground that the defendant was not a non-resident; (3), That in a suit against himself before a justice of the peace, he had endeavored by means of a false telephone message to decoy the justice from his office at the hour fixed for hearing, for the purpose of obtaining a nonsuit; (4), That he had exhibited in his professional intercourse a trifling and insincere character, which rendered him unworthy of the Court and clients, and which brought him and the profession to which he belonged into disrepute. A rule to strike from the roll of attorneys was made absolute: Held, that there was no error.</p>