Stipulated disbarment for taking
nearly $90,000 in client funds
A Los Angeles lawyer with extensive legal and political connections lost his license last month when the State Bar Court accepted his stipulated disbarment for misappropriating almost $90,000 from his clients. RICARDO A. TORRES II [#164848], 46, has been prohibited from practicing since September 2010, but the stipulation was the final nail in his legal coffin.
Torres is the son of former and now retired Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Ricardo A. Torres, who with his wife apparently obtained temporary guardianship over the younger Torres’ two minor children a year ago. According to published reports, the younger Torres may have left the country at one point and his whereabouts were a mystery.
The stipulated disbarment was reached with the State Bar’s major misappropriation task force, which prosecutes lawyers suspected of taking $25,000 or more from their clients. Torres is the third lawyer targeted by the task force whose license has been removed in the past month.
He also was disciplined by the bar in 2002 and tried to resign from the bar with charges pending in 2010, but his effort was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. Earlier this year, the State Bar Court recommended that Torres be disciplined in another case; that recommendation is pending before the Supreme Court.
According to the disbarment stipulation, Torres and three other law firms represented Lawrence and Rachel Prijoles, who were seriously injured in a 2005 head-on collision with a driver who was under the influence of alcohol. The couple eventually recovered general and punitive damages of $648,962.67.
Torres received checks totaling that amount and distributed $559,746.50 to the couple, the other attorneys and experts used at trial. However, he never paid the couple’s doctors and admitted he misappropriated $89,216.47, the remainder of the damages Torres received. He also never accounted for any settlement funds.
The misappropriation is considered moral turpitude, and violates professional responsibility rules.
“Mr. Torres’s disbarment was warranted in light of the fact that he misappropriated the Prijoleses’ settlement funds,” said deputy trial counsel Eli Morgenstern, who added that because of the stipulation, the clients are eligible for faster evaluation of their claim by the Client Security Fund, which reimburses clients for their lawyer’s dishonest acts.
On Feb. 1 this year, the bar court recommended that Torres be suspended as the result of his actions while representing a client in a criminal matter and a related restraining order hearing brought against him by his former girlfriend. The client, Juan Salcedo, paid Torres half his $30,000 fee, but five days later was notified by law enforcement that no criminal charges would be filed due to a lack of evidence.
Torres told Salcedo the criminal case was dismissed because of his efforts, when in fact he had done no work.
The bar court found that in addition to committing an act of moral turpitude by making misrepresentations to Salcedo, Torres did not account for or repay Salcedo’s fee and he did not return his file. The court recommended that Torres be suspended until he made restitution and proved his rehabilitation and fitness to practice.
Torres also was disciplined in 2002 for comminging personal and client funds in his trust account and writing bad checks against the account. He has been on inactive status since Sept. 1, 2010, when he was suspended for failing to pay bar dues.
In 1997, Torres ran for the state Assembly and the Los Angeles City Charter Commission. His sister also ran for the Assembly and his uncle, William Torres, is a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner. He found himself in hot water in 2002 after admitting he wrote and paid for several thousand inflammatory leaflets that criticized Antonio Villaraigosa, who was running for Los Angeles City Council.
The disbarment stipulation will be transmitted to the Supreme Court for formal action. In the interim, however, Torres is prohibited from practicing.