High court suspends
law practice of
State Rep. Sonson

The Hawaii Supreme Court has suspended state Rep. Alex M. Sonson, a Waipahu attorney, from practicing law for three months for committing numerous ethical violations, including misappropriating a client's funds.

Sonson's suspension is effective Jan. 19, and he must take a mandatory professionalism course as a condition of reinstatement, according to the court's Dec. 20 suspension order.

Although many of Hawaii's part-time legislators over the years have been lawyers, Sonson is believed to be the only recent sitting state legislator to be suspended by the high court, which oversees the conduct of attorneys in the state.

The Supreme Court is also reviewing a recommended three-year suspension of attorney Melodie Aduja, the former state senator who lost her re-election bid in the September primary.

The board for the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates allegations of attorney misconduct, recommended the suspension in finding that Aduja had committed numerous ethical violations, including mishandling client funds, in 2000, according to court documents.

The ODC announced yesterday the suspension of Sonson, 45, who was admitted to the Hawaii bar in October 1993 and is a graduate of ITT Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Sonson sent out a release last night that said the suspension was not related to his duties as a state legislator.

"I take full responsibility for my actions and will cooperate fully with the decision of the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. I would also like to apologize to my clients and to my constituents for these errors, and I want to assure them that it will not happen again," said Sonson (D, Pearl City-Waipahu).

According to ODC documents filed with the high court, Sonson received $2,000 in cash from a newly retained client in 1999 but did not put it in a client trust account as required. The money eventually was spent on Sonson's office expenses, according to the documents.

When the client made additional payments totaling $2,000 in 1999 and 2000, that money also was not deposited into a client trust account and was spent on office expenses, according to the ODC.

In January 2001 the client fired Sonson and requested a refund, but the attorney did not issue one immediately because he could not initially locate the money, the ODC documents said.

Two days after the client filed an ethics complaint with the ODC in March 2001, he received a refund from Sonson for $3,088. The balance covered the services Sonson billed for, according to the documents.

Sonson subsequently blamed his staff for failing to deposit the client's funds into a client trust account, but he took responsibility for the commingling of funds, the ODC said.

The ODC also found that Sonson violated the rules governing attorney conduct by depositing $1,800 from a settlement of a client's claim and a $2,000 check from the account of Jennifer C. Sonson (doing business as MAS Trading Enterprise) into Sonson's business account. Sonson defended both violations as being minor, according to the ODC.

The board also determined that Sonson violated the rules by mislabeling his law office bank accounts and falsely certifying compliance with the rule dealing with client funds in his annual registration statements from 1999 to 2002.

Sonson told the ODC that he did not order or approve the labels for his bank accounts and was not aware of any problems with his accounts when he signed the registration statements certifying compliance.

In arguing against sanctions, Sonson said that the infractions did not result in any harm or prejudice to a client except for a slight delay in issuing a refund, according to the court documents.

The published decisions of the high court generally state that misappropriation of client funds merits disbarment, the ODC said.

Other unpublished decisions, however, order varying terms of suspension, depending upon aggravating and mitigating circumstances.

Because of the serious nature of mishandling a client's funds and the multiple ethics violations, an ODC hearing officer recommended to the board that Sonson receive a four-month suspension. The board, however, subsequently recommended three months to the court.

While Sonson is the first sitting legislator to be suspended by the high court in recent memory, two then-City Council members have had ethics run-ins in the last few years.

In 2002, Jon Yoshimura was suspended from practicing law for six months for lying about a 1999 traffic accident. He never applied for reinstatement, according to the ODC.

In 2001, then-Councilman Andy Mirikitani was sentenced to four years in prison for a kickback and extortion scheme, and subsequently was suspended from practicing law temporarily based on that conviction.

Only recently has the formal ODC case against Mirikitani started.