Results tagged “Wold Law Firm” from Six Hours A Week: Adventures in American Exile
Timothy Geiszler will have to answer to Jeff Doud for this. In a July 2 filing, Geiszler went on an all out assault on my mother's mental health in what seems like a last ditch attempt to bully her into settlement with Steve Loken. He used a claim that my mother made about Mr. Doud's conspiring with Loken's camp to ruin her case to back up his assertions. So, here I explain why the use of the word conspiracy could indeed apply to Mr. Doud's actions, and why any reasonable person would come to such a conclusion. (Again, the Geiszler has pulled a quote from Mom's effort to amend her counterclaim against Loken to include civil conspiracy. The quote centers around the discovery request issue elaborated on below.)
After what I've seen, I feel comfortable stating that Mr. Doud should not be allowed to practice law. He is a young attorney whose ethical/professional sensibility was clearly quickly shaped by the Montana culture of cronyism. It's hard to imagine his moral compass being righted enough to entrust him with any unassuming client. (Having Tim McKeon as a father-in-law can't help.)
Doud took over the Loken case in fall of 2007 because Mom's other attorney was doing little on the case. Initially that attorney was very enthusiastic, but was never the same after a meeting with Mr. Geisler, at which he told her Mom was paranoid. (We have called Geiszler on this bit of slander -- clearly the incompetency angle has been part of his and Loken's plans for quite a while.)
In January of 2008, without informing his client, Mr. Doud propounded a second set of discovery requests on Mr. Loken. A year earlier, Mom's first attorney had received answers to discovery requests. The original attorney had asked around 14 questions. Mr. Doud asked around 80. This was in no way helpful to Mom's case -- the questions gave Mr. Loken the opportunity to elaborate upon and revise his narrative of what happened. It also allowed him to produce a schematic that my mother had never seen before, and that Loken claimed she provided.
Though Doud found the time to do this, he ignored Mom's pleas to follow up on details essential to her case like a previously-ignored Request for Production to get copies of canceled checks showing Loken's supposed $14000 worth of payments to an employee for work that was never finished. (Mom later followed up when she was defending herself pro se and newly printed versions of these supposedly already produced checks were submitted to court. This was that point at which an unrecognized attorney from Geiszler's firm started filing. This was completely against procedure, but Judge Deschamps never required this other attorney to become an attorney of record. It seemed like Geiszler was trying to put distance between himself and fabricated financial records.)
Mom didn't find out about the second set of discovery requests until around the end of October 2008 when Mr. Doud was no longer her attorney and she received her file from him. Attorneys are required to operate with their clients' informed consent. First, the requests obviously should not have been propounded without her knowledge. Second, if a defendant has no knowledge of the plaintiff's revised narrative of what occurred based on answers to 80 discovery questions, how can she make informed decisions about what direction to take the case?
If an attorney takes action in secret that is so clearly favorable to the opposing side isn't it reasonable to assume that he is conspiring? Of course, that's not all. The depth and breadth of Jeffrey Doud's malpractice is astounding. Please see a partial list of his greatest hits after the jump.
What's frightening is that the malpractice is so objectively identifiable and true, and Mr. Geiszler is working so hard to brand Mom's identification of it as symptomatic of paranoia. Do attorneys ruin their client's cases without speaking to another about it? (It would take a great leap of faith to believe that Doud is innocently and overwhelmingly incompetent.) Speaking to one other person about it makes it conspiracy. Doud did a lot of speaking to Mr. Geiszler without Mom's consent. Maybe that's why he needs Mom to be "crazy."
After what I've seen, I feel comfortable stating that Mr. Doud should not be allowed to practice law. He is a young attorney whose ethical/professional sensibility was clearly quickly shaped by the Montana culture of cronyism. It's hard to imagine his moral compass being righted enough to entrust him with any unassuming client. (Having Tim McKeon as a father-in-law can't help.)
Doud took over the Loken case in fall of 2007 because Mom's other attorney was doing little on the case. Initially that attorney was very enthusiastic, but was never the same after a meeting with Mr. Geisler, at which he told her Mom was paranoid. (We have called Geiszler on this bit of slander -- clearly the incompetency angle has been part of his and Loken's plans for quite a while.)
In January of 2008, without informing his client, Mr. Doud propounded a second set of discovery requests on Mr. Loken. A year earlier, Mom's first attorney had received answers to discovery requests. The original attorney had asked around 14 questions. Mr. Doud asked around 80. This was in no way helpful to Mom's case -- the questions gave Mr. Loken the opportunity to elaborate upon and revise his narrative of what happened. It also allowed him to produce a schematic that my mother had never seen before, and that Loken claimed she provided.
Though Doud found the time to do this, he ignored Mom's pleas to follow up on details essential to her case like a previously-ignored Request for Production to get copies of canceled checks showing Loken's supposed $14000 worth of payments to an employee for work that was never finished. (Mom later followed up when she was defending herself pro se and newly printed versions of these supposedly already produced checks were submitted to court. This was that point at which an unrecognized attorney from Geiszler's firm started filing. This was completely against procedure, but Judge Deschamps never required this other attorney to become an attorney of record. It seemed like Geiszler was trying to put distance between himself and fabricated financial records.)
Mom didn't find out about the second set of discovery requests until around the end of October 2008 when Mr. Doud was no longer her attorney and she received her file from him. Attorneys are required to operate with their clients' informed consent. First, the requests obviously should not have been propounded without her knowledge. Second, if a defendant has no knowledge of the plaintiff's revised narrative of what occurred based on answers to 80 discovery questions, how can she make informed decisions about what direction to take the case?
If an attorney takes action in secret that is so clearly favorable to the opposing side isn't it reasonable to assume that he is conspiring? Of course, that's not all. The depth and breadth of Jeffrey Doud's malpractice is astounding. Please see a partial list of his greatest hits after the jump.
What's frightening is that the malpractice is so objectively identifiable and true, and Mr. Geiszler is working so hard to brand Mom's identification of it as symptomatic of paranoia. Do attorneys ruin their client's cases without speaking to another about it? (It would take a great leap of faith to believe that Doud is innocently and overwhelmingly incompetent.) Speaking to one other person about it makes it conspiracy. Doud did a lot of speaking to Mr. Geiszler without Mom's consent. Maybe that's why he needs Mom to be "crazy."
Continue reading Jeffrey Doud's Legal Malpractice -- Buisness as Usual in Montana?.
