Maine’s highest court has disbarred a Damariscotta attorney after he violated various professional standards, including not sufficiently supervising an employee who used his clients’ funds to pay personal expenses.
After the Maine Supreme Judicial Court initially suspended Edward Dardis in January 2023, it fully disbarred him in early November for multiple violations of professional rules, according to court records.
An assistant for Dardis inappropriately wrote checks from an account that held his clients’ money between February 2021 and September 2022, according to court documents.
The Board of Overseers of the Bar began investigating Dardis after it was notified by another lawyer of a check in June 2022 that the assistant wrote to pay off a personal debt. The assistant reportedly signed Dardis’ name on the check. The board also found that the assistant issued multiple checks to herself from that same account, and that the account was separately used to pay for the firm’s expenses — which is not allowed under rules governing such accounts that are reserved for clients’ funds.
The checks came from what’s known as an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account, in which attorneys store money for their clients and use the interest to provide civil legal aid.
The checks totaled $33,535, the Lincoln County News previously reported.
Dardis maintained that he was not aware of his assistant’s actions or the debt she owed until the board began its investigation, according to court records. But the board claimed Dardis did not properly supervise the assistant or address the issue.
The court found Dardis in violation of several rules, including not keeping property of clients and his own personal property separate and not overseeing the actions of his assistant.
Additionally, the court said that Dardis did not provide information that was requested as part of the case. Dardis informed the court that he was ill from fall 2021 through early 2023, according to court records, and claimed he was not able to provide the information because of being in the hospital.
The court also accused Dardis of not following a requirement that he and his assistant give up control of the firm’s bank accounts, as well as its computers or mobile devices, after his suspension.
This left Dardis in violation of more rules, including unlawfully obstructing another party’s access to evidence and knowingly failing to respond to a lawful demand for information from an admissions or disciplinary authority, according to the court.
By 2019, Dardis was the only attorney practicing at his firm, Howard & Bowie. Now that he is disbarred, he may not apply for reinstatement for five years, and he must pay the board $200 for a court hearing transcript.
Dardis’s attorney, Walter McKee, could not be reached for comment.
