Matter of Michael Caliguiri

Appellate Division, First Dept.

Admitted to Bar: 1980

Discipline imposed: One year suspension

From 1984 until 2003 Caliguiri was employed by Garbarini & Scher, a law firm that
mostly represented doctors and hospitals sued for medical malpractice. In 1999
Caliguiri became the firm’s managing partner. Medical Liability Mutual Insurance
Co. (MLMIC), a huge insurer of doctors, was one of the firm’s major clients.

In light of Caliguiri’s expertise, a neighbor of Caliguiri’s asked him to answer

medical malpractice questions from one of his partners, for which no money changed
hands. Caliguiri knew that the defendant doctor being sued by the neighbor’s law
firm was insured by MLMIC.

Caliguiri’s wife worked for MLMIC and secretly copied MLIC’s confidential file on
the neighbor’s law firm’s case and gave it to Caliguiri. Both Caliguiri and his
wife testified that she did this without Caligiuri asking her to do so. Caliguiri
looked at the file, which confirmed his opinion that MLMIC would not voluntarily
settle the case because it felt it could successfully defend it.

The neighbor’s law firm disclosed Caliguiri’s participation to MLMIC and the
medical malpractice case was settled.

At the end of 2005 Caliguiri left Garbarini & Scher over "philosophical
differences." One month later his wife was fired by MLMIC.

Caliguiri says: The opinion he gave about the way the case would proceed was the
same before he read the documents as after – he did not formulate his advice based
on something he learned from the file.

The Appellate Division found: that while it believed that Caliguiri never
requested the copy of MLMIC’s file and his wife copied it on her own, he should
never have looked at it.

Despite the fact that Caliguiri made no money (no personal gain) the Appellate
Division held that his conduct violated the attorney-client privilege – that he
should have kept secret his client’s confidential information, even though his
firm was not representing the client for that case.

Commentary: The Court actually toyed with imposing a longer suspension, but found
that in addition to not gaining financially from his misconduct, Caliguiri showed
"profound remorse" and had suffered devastating financial and personal
consequences. Plus he had a clean disciplinary record, this being his first
infraction in an otherwise clean 25-year legal career.

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney
and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx)