LOS ANGELES — In the wake of its mishandling of decades of complaints against attorney Tom Girardi and revelations about weak policing of California lawyers, the State Bar made a surprisingly aggressive move this week: filing formal disciplinary charges against the agency’s own former executive director.
The bar accused Joe Dunn of three counts of moral turpitude stemming from his four-year tenure at the agency, which concluded with his 2014 firing. The allegations could result in Dunn, a former state senator who teaches at UC Irvine Law School, losing his license to practice law.
Dunn, 63, was among a handful of bar officials with whom Girardi cultivated close relationships in the years he was cheating clients and colleagues, but the charges filed Tuesday do not concern the now-disgraced trial attorney. Instead they focus on falsehoods Dunn allegedly told the bar’s governing board in 2013 and 2014 regarding proposed legislation and expenses for a trip to Mongolia.
