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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
No. 16-BG-385
IN RE BARBARA JUANITA HARGROVE, RESPONDENT.
A Suspended Member of the Bar
of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals
(Bar Registration No. 173419)
On Report and Recommendation
of the Board on Professional Responsibility
(15-BD-60)
(Submitted February 2, 2017 Decided March 9, 2017)
Barbara Juanita Hargrove, pro se.
Wallace E. Shipp, Jr., Disciplinary Counsel, Jennifer P. Lyman, Senior
Assistant Disciplinary Counsel, and Hamilton P. Fox, III, Assistant Disciplinary
Counsel, for the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
Before BECKWITH and MCLEESE, Associate Judges, and PRYOR, Senior
Judge.
PER CURIAM: Barbara Juanita Hargrove challenges the Report and
Recommendation of the Board on Professional Responsibility, in which the Board
determined that Ms. Hargrove violated the following Rules of Professional
Conduct: Rule 1.1 (a) (failure to provide competent representation); Rule 1.1 (b)
(failure to serve the client with commensurate skill and care); Rule 1.3 (c) (failure
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to act with reasonable promptness); Rule 1.16 (d) (failure to surrender papers and
property after termination of representation); and Rule 8.4 (d) (engaging in conduct
that seriously interferes with the administration of justice). The Board
recommended that Ms. Hargrove be suspended from the practice of law for sixty
days, with a requirement to prove fitness to practice as a condition of her
reinstatement. We conclude that Ms. Hargrove forfeited her ability to challenge
the Board’s Report and Recommendation in this court. We accept the Board’s
findings of fact as supported by substantial evidence and adopt the Board’s
recommended sanction.
Ms. Hargrove was appointed as personal representative of Emma O.
Johnson’s estate in 1996. During her time as personal representative, Ms.
Hargrove failed to record and collect a judgment on behalf of the heirs, took
multiple actions purporting to exercise ownership rights over Ms. Johnson’s
property when she did not have the legal authority to do so, failed to have the deed
to the property transferred from the heirs’ guardian to the Estate so that the
property could be sold, and allowed the Estate’s bank accounts to escheat to the
state. Ms. Hargrove was removed as personal representative in 2009. After her
removal, Ms. Hargrove refused to give the Estate’s file to the successor personal
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representative for over a year. As of February 2016, Ms. Hargrove had yet to pay a
$6,480.84 judgment and an $18,300 award of attorney’s fees to the Estate pursuant
to court orders from December 2012 and January 2013.
In a three-page brief in this court, Ms. Hargrove contends that (1) the Board
inappropriately entered a default judgment against her under D.C. Bar R. XI,
§ 8 (f), because Disciplinary Counsel did not provide clear and convincing
evidence that she violated the Rules of Professional Conduct listed in the
specification of charges; (2) she did not violate the Rules of Professional Conduct;
and (3) there were procedural errors during the disciplinary process. Disciplinary
Counsel responds that Ms. Hargrove is precluded from raising these contentions in
this court and that in any event the contentions lack merit.
We agree with Disciplinary Counsel that Ms. Hargrove’s contentions have
been forfeited. Ms. Hargrove had numerous opportunities to challenge the
allegations against her and to object to any procedural errors, but she failed to
properly do so. First, Ms. Hargrove did not timely file an answer to the
specification of charges. After missing earlier deadlines, Ms. Hargrove belatedly
moved to late-file two answers, citing only the “press of business” as a reason for
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her tardiness. Pursuant to D.C. Bar Rule XI, § 8 (f), the Hearing Committee
entered an order of default, concluding that Ms. Hargrove had not demonstrated
that her failure to timely file an answer was due to excusable neglect. The Hearing
Committee therefore treated the allegations against Ms. Hargrove as admitted,
subject to Disciplinary Counsel’s obligation to provide clear and convincing
evidence of the violations. Second, Ms. Hargrove did not appear either at a pre-
hearing conference or at the hearing before the Hearing Committee. Third, after
the Hearing Committee issued its Report and Recommendation, Ms. Hargrove had
the opportunity to move to vacate the order of default, Board R. 7.8 (g), or to file
notice of exceptions to the Hearing Committee’s findings and recommendations,
Board R. 13.3. She did neither. Ms. Hargrove thus “failed to avail [herself] of the
opportunity to make [her] arguments to the Board in the first instance.” In re
Green, 136 A.3d 699, 699-70 (D.C. 2016) (per curiam). Finally, Ms. Hargrove has
not presented any argument to this court as to why she should be allowed to
challenge the Board’s findings and recommendation despite her failure to raise her
contentions before the Board, and Ms. Hargrove’s brief in this court contains only
conclusory statements denying the charges against her.
“We have consistently held that an attorney who fails to present a point to
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the Board waives that point and cannot be heard to raise it for the first time here.”
In re Green, 136 A.3d at 700 (internal quotation marks omitted). We see no
extraordinary circumstance that might justify considering Ms. Hargrove’s forfeited
contentions. We therefore accept the Board’s factual findings as supported by
substantial evidence. See D.C. Bar R. XI, § 9 (h)(1) (“[T]he Court shall accept the
findings of fact made by the Board unless they are unsupported by substantial
evidence of record . . . .”). Given Ms. Hargrove’s misconduct in her representation
of the Estate and her failure to meaningfully participate in these disciplinary
proceedings, we also adopt the Board’s recommended sanction. See id. (“[T]he
Court . . . shall adopt the recommended disposition of the Board unless to do so
would foster a tendency toward inconsistent dispositions for comparable conduct
or would otherwise be unwarranted.”).
For the foregoing reasons, Barbara Juanita Hargrove is suspended from the
practice of law in the District of Columbia for sixty days, with reinstatement
conditioned on proof of fitness to practice law. For the purposes of reinstatement,
the period of suspension will begin to run when Ms. Hargrove has filed an affidavit
demonstrating full compliance with D.C. Bar R. XI, § 14 (g).
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So ordered.