On Sept. 12, Catherine Shelton appeared in Dallas County's criminal courthouse to represent a defendant. But if the State Bar of Texas had its way, Shelton would have been in Dallas' civil courthouse that week as a defendant herself in the Bar's disciplinary case against her.

In its first amended disciplinary petition, Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Catherine Shelton, the Bar lists 22 causes of action that involve complaints from former Shelton clients, including allegations that they paid her thousands of dollars in fees even though Shelton did little or no work on their cases.

Shelton denies the allegations, and she has filed a summary judgment motion with the court asserting the Bar has no evidence to prove its case.

But a series of procedural delays and continuance motions have kept the suit, now pending for nearly three years, from going to trial.

The Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure say that the court "shall set each disciplinary action to commence the trial no later than 180 days after the date the disciplinary petition is filed with the district clerk. No motion for continuance, resetting or agreed pass may be granted unless required by the interests of justice." However, the deadline is not mandatory. According to Rule 15.07, that time period is "directory only and the failure to comply . . . does not result in the invalidation of an act or event by reason of the noncompliance with those time limits."

Contradictory disciplinary rules without teeth are a big problem, according to a Washington, D.C., legal watchdog group. In Texas and across the nation, it can take years before lawyer disciplinary cases are tried in state district courts, says James C. Turner, executive director of HALT Inc., a nonprofit legal reform group.

Delays in trying disciplinary cases can result in harm to clients the lawyer continues to represent, Turner says. And procedural delays prolong the potential exoneration of a lawyer who may have done nothing wrong.

There's a simple fix for such delays, Turner says. "Systematically, you have to put in real deadlines and enforce them. The rules don't mean anything if you don't enforce them. And in every other area where you practice law, you've got deadlines that you've got to meet," he says. "There's just no reason why the attorney disciplinary system should not be regulated the same way."

Two lawyers with the State Bar say they have been frustrated in their attempts to get the disciplinary case against Shelton to trial. But the Rules of Disciplinary Procedure leave them little alternative but to wait, they say.

Setting a mandatory deadline for trying disciplinary suits has a serious downside, says Dawn Miller, the Bar's chief disciplinary counsel. It's possible that if the deadline passes - for whatever reason - the Bar may lose its only chance to try the case, she says.

Before 1992, there were no deadlines for trying disciplinary cases, Miller says. The Bar committee and the Texas Supreme Court committee that studied the disciplinary rules contemplated the Bar's possible loss of jurisdiction when they rewrote the disciplinary rules in 1991, Miller says. Rule 3.07 creates the deadline, and Rule 15.07 states that the timeline isn't mandatory.

"You don't want to set something up that it's mandatory in such a way that if you don't get it tried in that timeline, you risk your jurisdiction," Miller says.

In the Beginning

Most of the complainants filed their grievances against Shelton with the State Bar's Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel in 1999, and a Dallas grievance panel vetted them. [Several other complaints were filed after 1999.] The Dallas grievance panel offered an administrative punishment to Shelton that she felt was too harsh, Steven L. Lee, one of Shelton's lawyers, told Texas Lawyer in 2001. Lee, a partner in Austin's Lione & Lee, declined to disclose the proposed administrative punishment. As a result, Shelton elected to have the case arising from the complaints heard in a state district court rather than continue with the grievance process, said Nancy Thursby, Dallas regional counsel for the State Bar. [See "Bar Prepares for High-Profile Discipline Case," Texas Lawyer, Jan. 29, 2001, page 25.]

The State Bar subsequently submitted Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Catherine Shelton to the Texas Supreme Court on Jan. 17, 2001. The Supreme Court is responsible for assigning the judge who hears a disciplinary case against a lawyer.

In its petition, the Bar alleges that Shelton agreed to represent clients in immigration matters, but she was "not experienced in immigration matters and not competent to handle such cases."

The State Bar alleges that Shelton "performed no legal services" for some of the immigration clients and "charged an unconscionable fee based upon her lack of experience in immigration matters."

Lee alleged in a 2001 interview with Texas Lawyer that the problems with the immigration cases were caused by inadequate work done by Shelton's paralegals.

As required by the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, the high court subsequently assigned the suit to a sitting state district judge from outside the region where Shelton practices. The rationale behind Rule 3.02 is to ensure that lawyers are not judged by jurists they practice in front of regularly. The civil suit landed in Dallas County's 162nd District Court on April 11, 2001.

The first delay arose when the State Bar filed a motion to recuse the original trial judge assigned to hear the case.

Christopher Weil, the Bar's special counsel assigned to Shelton's case, sought the recusal of Judge Andy Mireles of Bexar County's 73rd District Court. In a June 4, 2001, recusal motion, Weil, a partner in Dallas' Weil & Petrocchi, did not state his reasons for objecting to Mireles. Weil did not return a phone call seeking comment before presstime on Sept. 18.

On Aug. 9, 2001, more than two months later, the Texas Supreme Court assigned Judge John Dietz of Austin's 250th District Court to preside over the case. Dietz re-set a May 5, 2002, trial date to Feb. 10, 2003, because of scheduling conflicts, Thursby says.

"Judge Dietz is the administrative judge for his area. He's just extremely busy. He's a very good judge."

Dietz did not return two calls seeking comment.

In 2003, Shelton has sought and been granted two continuances for health reasons.

Dietz granted her first continuance motion because Shelton said she was too sick to go to trial. The judge re-set the trial date from June 19 to Sept. 8.

On Aug. 11, Shelton filed a second motion for continuance, saying she suffers from lymphocystic meningitis and Lyme borreliosis.

"Catherine Shelton is recuperating from a serious illness and [is] unable to assist her attorneys in preparation for trial or to testify in her own behalf," Shelton said in the motion.

According to an affidavit she signed on Aug. 6 that is attached to her motion, Shelton says she has been ill since "April or May of 2003," has made more than one trip to the emergency room, suffers from severe pain in her joints and has not been appearing in court based on her doctor's instructions - with one exception.

"I now know I have Lyme disease," Shelton states in her affidavit. "I have been staying out of court as instructed by my doctor. I felt it necessary to make one appearance in federal court because a client had fled and I felt the court deserved to hear from me."

"The appearance was a disaster because I was weak, unable to concentrate, and ended up crying," Shelton states in her affidavit.

On Aug. 18, Dietz signed an order allowing State Bar lawyers to depose Shelton's Dallas doctor, Sheila Calderon, whose diagnosis was the basis of the judge's June and September continuance orders. Dietz subsequently granted the motion once again, postponing the Sept. 8 trial date to Dec. 8.

But Shelton did make an appearance as a witness before 192nd District Judge Merrill Hartman of Dallas in a libel case she filed against her former paralegal, Marisa Hierro, during the week of Aug. 25, says Shelton's attorney, James M. Murphy, a Dallas solo.

Murphy says Shelton appeared at the libel trial only to testify on her own behalf. "She appeared with the consent of her doctor," Murphy says.

In a petition filed in 2001, Hierro alleged that Shelton was partly responsible for the death of her husband, Michael Hierro. Shelton countersued accusing her of libel.

Heirro apparently abandoned her suit. Neither she, nor an attorney representing her, showed up at trial to defend Shelton's countersuit.

On Aug. 29, Hartman ruled in Hierro, et al. v. Shelton that Catherine Shelton "is actually innocent of the allegations of murder" and awarded her $4.8 million in damages. Hierro did not appear at the trial and she could not be located for comment. [See "High-Profile History," this page.]

On Sept. 12, Shelton also represented a client in a hearing on a motion for new trial before visiting Judge Don Metcalfe in a Dallas County criminal district court.

Miller says there's not much the Bar can do about Shelton's appearances in other cases because Dietz already has allowed the continuances. But Miller believes they may have an impact on any future continuances Shelton might request.

Shelton and Lee decline to comment.

A Lengthy Process

The delay in the suit against Shelton is unusual, Miller says. Of the 100 disciplinary cases the State Bar files in district courts each year, about 20 of them go to trial. The majority of the other cases settle, Miller says.

Suits that end up in state district court typically are tried within 621 days after a complainant files a grievance with the Bar, according to State Bar figures compiled between July 1, 2000, and June 30, 2002, Miller says.

Assuming it takes at least one year for a grievance panel to vet a complaint, it takes about one year and 10 months for a disciplinary suit to go to trial after the Supreme Court assigns it to a district court judge, Miller says.

And as time passes, Shelton's chances of prevailing in the Bar's disciplinary case against her increase, say three attorneys familiar with the disciplinary system.

Because a majority of the complainants in the case are immigrants, some of them may have gone back to their home countries, the lawyers suggest.

"Delay favors the respondent and that is a strategy . . .," says David Evans, a former chairman of the Bar's Commission for Lawyer Discipline.

But it also may be that the Bar is not anxious to go to trial because its case is weak, says Bob Bennett, a partner in Houston's Bennett Law Firm who represents defendants in attorney disciplinary cases.

"It may be that they don't have much of a case," Bennett adds. Indeed, Shelton's lawyers filed a motion with Dietz last year alleging that the Bar has "no evidence" to prove its case.

Miller says the Bar's case against Shelton has its difficulties. The principal witness in the case, Hierro, cannot be located by the Bar, Miller says. She has not shown up for depositions, according to documents the Bar filed in Shelton's case.

And Miller says it has been difficult for the Bar to keep up with Shelton's former immigration clients.

"We certainly have the difficulty of the nature of the complainants being immigration clients. And we have the difficulty of the principal complainant being mostly inaccessible," Miller says.

"And, yes, I would agree that Ms. Shelton doesn't want to lose her law license," Miller says. "But that certainly doesn't mean we're not going to put our best foot forward on the case."

"Obviously we would like to get disbarment because we feel she is someone who should not be licensed to practice," Miller adds. "But I don't think we can get that in this case, based on what we could establish.