Greene County Lawyer Suspended after Romance with Clients
By
Order dated September 4, 2025, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania suspended attorney Kimberly Furmanek of West Finley, Greene County from the practice of law for two years based on a finding by the Disciplinary Board that she had engaged in a romantic attachment to an imprisoned client and committed misconduct related to that representation.
Most of the issues arose from Furmanek’s involvement with John Lazear in a criminal case in her role as Conflicts Counsel for Greene County. She was acquainted with Lazear from high school but was not involved in a romantic relationship with him when she entered her appearance on his behalf.
About eighteen months into the representation, the relationship between Furmanek and Lazear became personal and romantic. This continued until Furmanek’s termination from the Conflict Counsel office on December 7, 2021. She testified that she explained to Lazear it was "frowned upon for an attorney and a client to be in a relationship" but stated "it was never an issue for [Lazear]." Furmanek admitted that she never obtained Lazear's informed consent to the conflict. She was criticized by the prison for wearing inappropriate attire, engaged in personal discussion on telephone calls intended for counsel business, and a video taken during a visit authorized only for professional contacts displayed an embrace and an intimate kiss between Furmanek and Lazear, which was strictly prohibited by prison policy. When questioned by the Court Administrator about her involvement, she falsely denied that the relationship was romantic.
Furmanek also allowed the client to listen in on a telephone call to his successor counsel, without counsel’s knowledge, after which the client made threatening calls to successor counsel’s office, leading to successor counsel’s decision to withdraw. Furmanek was charged with criminal conduct because of this call and entered a counseled plea of guilty to two misdemeanor counts for which she was sentenced to probation for a period of twelve months. The client was also convicted of one count of terroristic threats due to the calls.
The Disciplinary Board found that Furmanek’s conduct violated several Rules of Professional Conduct, including
RPC 1.7(a)(2) [concurrent conflict of interest],
RPC 1.16(a)(1) [failure to withdraw],
RPC 4.1(a) [false statement of fact to a third person], and several sections of
RPC 8.4. In addition, the Board noted that her criminal conviction was, in and of itself, grounds for discipline.
The Board found a significant aggravating factor in her failure to accept full responsibility or to show remorse due to her failure to comprehend that her conduct was unethical. Another aggravating factor was that Furmanek had been warned by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel that romantic relationships with clients were prohibited in a prior case and still indulged in such a relationship both with Lazear and with a subsequent client. The Board also found Furmanek's testimony lacking in credibility. Mitigating factors included a lack of prior discipline and character witness testimony. After review of case law, the Board recommended a suspension for two years. The Supreme Court accepted this recommendation and suspended Furmanek for two years.
Texas Lawyer Charged with Cyberstalking BigLaw Lawyers
A Texas lawyer has been charged in federal court with cyberstalking and transmitting threatening communications after she
targeted a partner and an associate in a large international law firm with dozens of social media posts and emails threatening numerous consequences including violence.
A criminal complaint
filed September 5, 2025 in the Northern District of Texas against Fangzhou Chen, who goes by the name of Amber Chen,
alleges that she made numerous posts on an unidentified social media account, leveling accusations against one of the attorneys, demanding his resignation, threatening to release damaging information, and escalating to threats of violence. One post said, “If any of you ever stalk me again I’ll [pistol icon] you to death.” Another said, simply, “Sniper on site.” Another identified the locations of the two attorneys and added, “Use a silencer,” a phrase that appeared in several posts and emails. The posts stated or implied that the associate, located in Los Angeles, had contracted for the murder of the partner, located in New York.
The partner in New York also received nine emails over two days ordering him to leave the country under threat of death. One stated, “If I ever see you anywhere around [the law firm] anywhere on earth, you will be eliminated on the spot.”
Chen had never worked for the law firm, although she included it on her Texas State Bar listing, and the victim attorneys were unaware of what connection she had to the law firm or what her grievance with it was.
At the time the law firm reported the incidents, Chen was already under investigation by the FBI based on her history of submitting over twenty-five tips alleging a variety of threats, including international and domestic terrorism, murder-for-hire, crimes against children, bank robbery, civil rights crimes, and election crimes. None of the tips were substantiated.
AI Follies, October Edition: Counsel’s Responsibilities and Disciplinary Practice
Sometimes it seems that we need a regular monthly section on lawyers (
and judges) getting themselves in trouble for misusing artificial intelligence-assisted software tools.
This month provides two new wrinkles in the growing literature of AI-driven misadventures.
Defense Counsel Responsibilities
A new decision from the California Court of Appeals raises a question that should bother even those attorneys who disdain or use carefully the new technology: does opposing counsel have an obligation to call the court’s attention to “hallucination” cases cited by the other side?
In the case of
Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P., counsel for the plaintiff had well and truly mangled his briefs by citing a large number of inapplicable or nonexistent cases, or “hallucinations.” The Court found that twenty-one of twenty-three case quotations in his opening brief were fabricated, along with many more in the reply brief. The briefs contained supposed quotes from the cases that were not in them, and other cases did not support the points for which they were cited or exist at all. Counsel admitted that he was unaware that AI-generated quotes were not authentic and failed to review the cases cited directly. The Court found the appeal frivolous on this ground and upheld the lower court’s grant of summary judgment. Since the false citations forced the court staff to perform research and effort to discern the truth, the Court ordered that plaintiff’s counsel pay $10,000 in sanctions to the Court.
The Court declined, however, to award sanctions to the defendants, noting that “respondents did not alert the court to the fabricated citations and appear to have become aware of the issue only when the court issued its order to show cause.”
The California Court of Appeals ruling suggests that counsel encountering an opponent who has cited hallucinated cases has a responsibility to call them to the attention of the court and not sit back and wait for the court to do the work of discovery.
A Very Bad Setting to Hallucinate
One suspended lawyer
found out the hard way what happens when opposing counsel does check the citations.
Iowa lawyer
Royce David Turner was suspended in 2018. He filed a series of petitions for reinstatement. In the latest, he filed documents with the Supreme Court of Iowa in support of his reinstatement in anticipation of a scheduled hearing.
Unfortunately for Turner, counsel for the Iowa Disciplinary Board did check his citations and discovered that “several of Respondent’s filings contain what appears to be at least one AI-generated citation to a case that does not exist or does not stand for the proposition asserted in the filings.” An Indiana case by the same name exists, but neither a case in Iowa nor any case at the citation given could be found. The Disciplinary Board
moved to strike the three offending documents.
Reports on the case do not indicate whether the Court has acted on the Board’s motion to strike, but it did cancel a reinstatement hearing scheduled for July 31
st, noting that Turner had yet to establish proof of payment to his clients or provide “convincing proof” of his fitness to practice law.
When trying to establish one’s fitness to practice law, citing a fictitious case in support of reinstatement might not be the best strategy.
Lawyer for Claire’s Accepts Ear Piercing in Court
We’ve heard stories of lawyers getting reamed out in court, but a New York attorney volunteered to take the needle for his client’s cause, and the court took him up on it.
Kirkland and Ellis partner Joshua Sussberg
was representing Claire’s, the accessories giant, in proceedings in bankruptcy court in the U.S. District Court for Delaware. Sussberg and his co-counsel were seeking court approval of a plan to try to find a buyer for Claire’s and avoid a liquidation. Co-counsel recounted that both she and the judge’s daughter had undergone ear piercings at Claire’s. Then the team produced a picture showing that Sussberg himself had his ears pierced at Claire’s as a high school student in 1995. Seeking to nail down the deal, Sussberg told the court, “Your honor, we are focused on preserving jobs and keeping stores open for a long time so many people can get their ears pierced. If we can get a deal done, I am willing to get my ears pierced.” Judge Bredan Shannon answered, “I’m going to hold you to that.”
And, indeed, he did. After the deal was worked out, Sussberg gamely showed up in Judge Shannon’s court where a Claire’s staffer did the deed on his left ear. He even wore a Claire’s crown for the occasion. There’s a
video.
