On October 17, 2013, the South Carolina Supreme Court placed a retired lawyer on interim suspension for numerous reasons, including failing to maintain a valid e-mail address.
When Cynthia Collie, a retired lawyer, was ordered to provide a valid email address pursuant to South Carolina Appellate Court Rule 410(g), she provided the following: rule.410-retired@yahoo.com. When a court clerk later attempted to email her at this address, the clerk received an auto response that stated, “Rule 410 – retired. No reply. Please consult the current directory for contact information.” The clerk immediately requested that Collie remove the auto response and begin to actively monitor her email.
Collie replied that her office did not have access to the Internet and that she was exempt from the email requirement because she had not had a client in thirty years. The court placed Collie on interim suspension as “a result of her persistent refusal to comply with [the] Court’s directives.” The ABA Journal spoke with Collie who stated she was “trying to resolve the email issue on behalf of other retired people like herself.”
Click here to read the article and here to read the order issued by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
