LAW On January 9, Dallas attorney JAMES HANNERS, one of the imperial lawyers whose abuses were the subject of D Magazine’s May 1991 cover story, “Why We Love To Hate Lawyers,” was disbarred in the 193rd state District Court. Hanners’ undoing started with a client named JAMES KOZACKI, who believed he had been cheated by Hanners. Kozacki picketed Hanners’ Waxahachie office, and he organized a town meeting to let other angry clients know how to file grievances against the lawyer.
A former employee of Hanners testified in court that the lawyer asked her to forge Kozacki’s name to a settlement check, then pocketed the money. Another former client testifed that Hanners forged a settlement check made out to the client’s chiropractor.
The judge ordered Hanners to notify all his clients of his disbarment and to pay $12,500 in court costs. In addition, he must make restitution of $9,675, plus 10 percent interest since July 1990, to Kozacki, and pay $5,000 to Kozacki’s Chicago attorney. Criminal charges against Hanners in the forgery of the chiropractor’s check are scheduled to go to trial this month.
“Everybody said it couldn’t be done,” Kozacki says. “The process took a year and a half, but when you finally get it going, it will work.” In January, Kozacki filed an additional grievance against MELANIE DAVIES, Hanners’ wife and law partner. But Kozacki still must fight a $3 million civil lawsuit filed by Hanners in 68th District Court, also scheduled for March. And he faces charges that he engaged in “organized crime” in an incident in which Hanners apprehended several men in Hanners’ DeSoto apartment, stabbing one. That case is slated for April.
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