From the long (20K-word) decision of the Washington Supreme Court Thursday in In the Matter of Disciplinary Proceeding Against Feyissa, written by Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud:
After a 12-day disciplinary hearing, a hearing officer (HO) concluded that Shakespear N. Feyissa committed six counts of misconduct. The presumptive sanction for most of those counts was disbarment…. The Disciplinary Board (Board) of the Washington State Bar Association (Bar) unanimously adopted the HO’s disbarment recommendation. Feyissa appeals….
Attorney Shakespear N. Feyissa was born in Ethiopia. He immigrated to the United States at around age 17….
There’s a lot going on in the case, and you can read it for yourself here. But here’s one brief passage that particularly struck me:
Feyissa claims that the HO refused to consider cultural differences. But the record contradicts that assertion ….
As stated above, Feyissa’s friend testified about cultural differences between Ethiopian and Western cultures relating to norms in negotiations. The witness opined that “in Ethiopia, ‘If you tell a lie but everybody’s happy, then you didn’t do anything wrong.'”
The HO clearly did not refuse to consider this testimony or to evaluate its impact on the case, as evidenced by her conclusion of law on the issue; the HO made the sustainable legal conclusion that this cultural difference “does not exempt Respondent from his professional obligations under the RPCs, and thus cannot be accepted as a reason to mitigate Respondent’s conduct as a lawyer.”
Here are the passages from Feyissa’s counsel’s briefs that raise the argument to which the supreme court was apparently referring: