Denver attorney Devon M. Barclay suspended for misconduct in individual bankruptcy situation

A decide this 7 days suspended a Denver attorney from training regulation in Colorado’s federal individual bankruptcy court docket right after getting he lied, submitted bogus legal documents and engaged in a sample of “fraudulent schemes” to try to get a situation dismissed.

Devon M. Barclay was barred from training in U.S. Individual bankruptcy Court docket for the District of Colorado for a few years. The lawyer violated his qualified responsibilities and committed “egregious law firm misconduct,” bankruptcy Decide Thomas McNamara wrote in a scathing 46-webpage order issued Tuesday.

The suspension arrives out of Barclay’s steps in a single individual bankruptcy circumstance in which he represented clients in 2021, in accordance to the buy.

“From start off to finish, Mr. Barclay’s representation of the debtors was incompetent,” McNamara wrote. “Even even worse, he engaged in intentional terrible-faith misconduct. … Fairly than give qualified authorized assistance, Mr. Barclay engaged in a weird gamesmanship in the personal bankruptcy approach.”

Barclay instructed The Denver Put up Wednesday that he believes the suspension is the end result of a private vendetta in opposition to him and is in retaliation for a earlier investigation he mentioned he carried out into a trustee with the Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee Plan. It oversees the administration of personal bankruptcy circumstances.

“It’s a shame I ran out of the sources to defend a good deal of the allegations,” he mentioned, incorporating that he had “never willingly tried to lie or mislead the court docket.”

Barclay declined to explore any other distinct allegations towards him.

“It’s driven much more by a want to shut me up,” he explained of the suspension. “… That is seriously why the pleadings are as intense and wordy as they are.”

The ruling does not impact his in general law license or stop him from doing the job in Colorado’s point out courts, but Barclay will have to inform condition authorities to his suspension by Jan. 24, McNamara ruled.

The state’s Office environment of Legal professional Regulation Counsel, which is accountable for disciplining Colorado attorneys, had no general public info to share about Barclay on Wednesday, Legal professional Regulation Counsel Jessica Yates stated. Barclay mentioned Wednesday that the business was aware of the suspension.

The judge’s suspension order states that in the 2021 situation, Barclay solid signatures, tried using to manipulate the personal bankruptcy cost filing procedure, filed motions dependent on bogus assertions of truth and prompt his shoppers test to infect a rival attorney with COVID-19.

Barclay also tried out to get the case dismissed on wrong grounds and promised to spend a 3rd-occasion creditor if they assisted with the scheme, according to the buy. The creditor did not do so, alternatively alerting authorities.

“Given the gravamen of Mr. Barclay’s misconduct, there can be no question — no doubt in any way — that incredibly severe sanctions need to be imposed,” McNamara wrote. “After all, the malfeasance was intentional and dedicated in negative faith ensuing in severe abuse of the personal bankruptcy course of action. And the misconduct … was systematic and continuous, not some kind of just one-time slip-up.”