Former state delegate draws suspension (69569)

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Former lawmaker Barbara Osborn Kreamer was indefinitely suspended from the practice of law last week, but will be allowed to seek reinstatement after six months.

The suspension for lack of diligence and communication in a divorce matter is the third sanction in six years for Kreamer, who served on the Harford County Council from 1978 to 1982 and in the House of Delegates from 1983 until 1990.

Kreamer’s unsuccessful attempt to regain a seat on the Harford County Council in 2002 was partly to blame for her lack of attention to Benchamas D. Sporay’s divorce action, she told the hearing judge assigned to the disciplinary matter.

She “explained her failures as resulting from a campaign for elective office in the fall of 2002, her decertification by the Client Security Trust Fund for a time, time spent correcting the foregoing problem, and the need to train a new secretary who required constant instruction,” wrote the hearing judge, Baltimore County Circuit Judge Susan Souder. “These excuses did not constitute valid defenses.”

The Court of Appeals agreed, rejecting Kreamer’s argument that she should receive at most a reprimand.

However, the court also stopped short of the two-year suspension sought by the Attorney Grievance Commission, which called Kreamer’s actions “a repeat of prior misconduct.”

Kreamer was indefinitely suspended for lack of diligence and communication in February 1999 but reinstated four months later, on the condition that she be monitored for two years. She consented to a reprimand shortly after the November 2002 election for lack of diligence regarding a guardianship matter.

Her representation of Sporay began in February 2002, a month after Sporay left her husband and their home.

By May 2002, Kreamer had obtained a protective order preventing Sporay’s husband from contacting her and allowing Sporay to return to their home to collect her belongings. Kreamer also filed an answer to the husband’s complaint for divorce and filed a counter-complaint for absolute divorce.Husband’s status

Sporay next met with Kreamer in January 2003, telling her lawyer that she wanted to go forward with the divorce since it had been a year since the separation. She also said that her husband, who was in the military reserves, “may be called up” to serve in Iraq.

Although that would put the divorce action on hold, Kreamer’s testimony was contradictory on whether she ever discussed that fact with Sporay. At first she said she was “sure” she would have because that “is a big issue practicing law in Aberdeen.” Immediately after that, however, she said she “should have said something more definite,” but was trying to comfort Sporay, who “was very, very upset.”

After the January meeting, Kreamer did not investigate the husband’s status or take any action to move the case forward, last week’s opinion says. Nor did she answer the client’s phone calls or e-mails, except to promise that she would answer them later.

Kreamer later testified that, between January and July 2003, “she was planning a settlement demand to be submitted to opposing counsel on behalf of the Client,” Souder wrote. “To the extent [Kreamer] was ‘planning,’ it was apparently a cerebral exercise undertaken without the benefit of information concerning the opposing party’s current financial information.”

In September 2003, Sporay retained new counsel. Kreamer struck her appearance in the case, but did not turn over her files to Sporay’s attorney until her peer review meeting in the disciplinary action, in February 2004.

Souder found, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that Kreamer had violated Maryland Rules of Professional Responsibility 1.3 (diligence), 1.4 (communication with clients) and 8.1 (response to disciplinary authority), but not 1.1 (competence).

“Having considered the particular facts and circumstances of this case and Ms. Kreamer’s prior discipline history,” the Court of Appeals concluded last week, “we think the appropriate sanction is an indefinite suspension with the right to reapply for reinstatement after the expiration of six months.”

Despite an endorsement from The Baltimore Sun, Kreamer, a Democrat, lost her 2002 bid to represent Hickory, Forest Green, Aberdeen and Churchville on the Harford County Council to Richard Slutzky, a teacher at Aberdeen High.

Kreamer also vied for the Democratic Party’s nomination for Congress in 1990 and 1994, but was defeated. Later in 1994, she ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on a primary slate headed by then-state Sen. Mary A. Boergers, D-Montgomery, in what was billed as “Maryland’s first all-woman ticket.”