The Dayton Daily News disclosed in a March 2010 story that attorney Ben M. Swift was overbilling courts in four counties while serving as appointed attorney for children and indigent defendants. The Dayton Bar Association began its investigation after the our story. The Ohio Supreme Court disciplined Swift this week.
The Ohio Supreme Court today suspended the law license of Dayton area attorney Ben M. Swift for overbilling Miami Valley courts for his legal services over a 22-month period and failing to keep billing records.
A Dayton Daily News investigation had previously revealed that Swift collected $142,945 for 3,315.5 hours of work in a single 12-month period and was the highest paid court-appointed lawyer in the state for 2008 and 2009. He billed for working 14 to 30 hours a day in several instances.
Swift’s law license will be suspended for two years but he can get it back after one year if he repays $50,000, submits to a year of monitored probation and commits no further misconduct. Swift, an attorney since 1995, had no previous disciplinary record.
Attorney Gary Leppla, who represented Swift in the disciplinary case, said Swift did the work but failed to keep records.
“He acknowledged he was submitting time he couldn’t back up with documents but he performed services, he represented clients and he was outstanding by all accounts in how he represented those clients,” Leppla said. “Ben Swift stepped up like he always does and took responsibility for his actions.”
In December 2013 the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline of the Ohio Supreme Court said Swift had overbilled courts in Montgomery, Greene, Clark and Warren counties while serving as the appointed attorney for children and indigent defendants and “acted with a dishonest or selfish motive” and “had a pattern of misconduct.”
The supreme court took 11 months to make the final disciplinary decision and when it did justices were divided 4-3. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Judith Ann Lanzinger and William M. O’Neill would have indefinitely suspended Swift, the court said.
The Dayton Bar Association began auditing Swift after the Dayton Daily News published stories in March 2010 highlighting Swift’s billing practices. The bar filed a disciplinary complaint against him.
Swift takes a high volume of court-appointed work from juvenile and common pleas courts with the bulk of cases coming from Montgomery County Juvenile Court. Court-appointed counsel represent people too poor to hire their own attorneys. The bills are approved by the local courts and then split between the state and counties.
The courts typically rotate appointments among a list of attorneys. But the Daily News investigation in March 2010 found that of the 170 attorneys on the Montgomery County Juvenile Court list, just five had received 20.7 percent of the appointment cases between 2007 and 2010. Swift topped the list with 848 cases.
Swift must pay back $20,000 to the state, $21,900 to Montgomery County, $5,100 to Warren County, $2,700 to Greene County and $300 to Clark County.
Ohio Public Defender Tim Young said he is pleased by the court’s decision and noted that local judges select attorneys to represent indigent clients and approve their bills. Ohio needs a better system for auditing those bills for accuracy and integrity, he said.
“Ohio is spending $125 million a year on indigent defense. We should make sure we know how we are doing it with complete transparency everywhere in the state,” Young said.
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