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Letter to the editor

High-profile lawyer, judge spar on ethics

At the lawyer's insistence, the Florida Bar has put him on trial.

By COLLEEN JENKINS, Times Staff Writer
Published December 5, 2007

Arnold Levine talks with his attorney moments before the start of Tuesday's trial in Clearwater.
	[Douglas R. Clifford | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Douglas R. Clifford | Times] Circuit Judge Gregory Holder testifies at Levine's trial.

CLEARWATER - Arnold Levine became a big name among Tampa attorneys as much for his imperious New York manner as for his high-profile cases.

He handles multimillion-dollar divorces. He represented the Tampa Bay Bucs. He persuaded a jury to go easy on a woman accused of hiring a hit man to kill her husband, known as the Lobster Boy.

Now, even as his career nears the half-century mark, Levine continues to rankle authority figures.

This week, he is standing trial in a Clearwater courtroom, accused of snooping on one Hillsborough judge's desk and of improperly trying to remove another judge from a case.

Accused of several misdeeds in the past, Levine has never been formally punished by the Florida Bar. He might be closer now than ever, but the septuagenarian isn't running scared.

In fact, he demanded his attorney fight the ethics charges at trial instead of making a deal.

"I'm tough as nails. I'm aggressive," Levine said. But, he noted, "I don't act contrary to the rules."

His strategy paid off in part Tuesday, when a Pinellas County referee dismissed one judge's charge on the first day of trial.

As for the other half of the case, Levine may have met his match.

His adversary is Hillsborough Circuit Judge Gregory Holder. The judge complained to the Bar last year that Levine tried to "engineer" his disqualification from a case.

Levine, who turns 76 on Dec. 12, counters that Holder, also known for being hard-nosed, is avenging an unflattering letter that the attorney penned when the judge applied for a federal judgeship.

"You have a bad personality clash when it comes to these two individuals," Levine's attorney, Scott Tozian, said during his opening statement.

The bad blood dates to 2003. That's when Holder, 54, removed Levine as the attorney from a case involving the Tampa Bay Lightning after learning that Levine had peeked at the Lightning attorneys' confidential files.

Levine denied impropriety. He complained about Holder's handling of the case to the state's Judicial Qualification Commission, but the commission declined to press charges.

In early 2006, Levine appeared before Holder in a case involving a development dispute. About the same time, the lawyer said, he learned that the judge was seeking appointment to the federal bench.

"I was aghast at that possibly happening," Levine testified.

In a Feb. 6, 2006, letter to the federal judicial nominating commission, he suggested Holder's application should be rejected. He called the judge "arrogant and unnecessarily dictatorial."

On Feb. 16, at his client's behest, Levine filed a motion to disqualify Holder from the development case.

Days later, after receiving a copy of Levine's letter, Holder denied the motion and ruled in favor of Levine's opposition. He also denied Levine's two subsequent disqualification motions.

But on the witness stand Tuesday, Holder announced, "I hereby disqualify myself from any matter involving Mr. Arnold Levine."

The Florida Bar said Levine had "impugned the qualification and integrity of a judge."

The Bar also chastised him for removing documents from Hillsborough Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen's desk during a break at a Sept. 11, 2006, hearing. Nielsen testified Tuesday that he found Levine's actions unprofessional.

But Pinellas Judge Cynthia Newton, acting as the referee, ruled that Bar attorneys hadn't provided sufficient evidence of wrongdoing.

Newton will continue hearing evidence this morning and is expected to decide this week whether Levine should be punished in the Holder case.

During a break in testimony Tuesday, Levine left the courtroom through the witness room instead of the main exit.

"Is it appropriate to go that way?" his attorney asked.

Levine grinned.

"You know me, baby."

Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or 813 226-3337.

[Last modified December 5, 2007, 00:25:17]