The Michigan Attorney Discipline Board on Monday ruled that an attorney who represented former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick at a police whistle-blower trial committed five violations of professional rules of conduct in connection with the text message scandal.

As a result, Samuel McCargo could be reprimanded, suspended or even disbarred. McCargo’s penalty hearing has not been scheduled. The board said it will be held soon, though an appeal is expected.

“The facts of this case would make an ideal law school final exam in professional ethics,” the three-member panel said in an 83-page opinion.

Unfortunately, the actions and motivations by the various participants resulted in a real life perfect storm for professional misconduct to occur.”

Though “McCargo was dealt an unfortunate set of cards, including a less than forthright client, he played them poorly,” the panel said.

McCargo, who did not return telephone and e-mail messages Monday, is one of five attorneys charged with professional misconduct in connection with the text message scandal.

His attorney, George Bedrosian, said he will appeal. The case is about an attorney’s duty to his client versus an expectation to “both turn him in and then become virtually his prosecutor,” Bedrosian said.

“Anybody who came near Kilpatrick during this whole period of time ended up being in trouble,” Bedrosian said. “This guy (Kilpatrick) is out in 90 days and living high on the hog while everybody else is falling by the wayside.”

Though each attorney’s case was heard by a separate panel, McCargo’s panel commented unfavorably on the testimony of attorneys Michael Stefani and Valerie Colbert-Osamuede, who testified in McCargo’s case while facing disciplinary proceedings of their own.

Stefani’s hearings are over and he is awaiting a ruling from the panel. Colbert-Osamuede’s ethics violations hearings are set to begin March 19.

All the discipline cases relate to a secret deal struck along with an $8.4 million settlement of whistle-blower lawsuits brought by former Detroit police officers Gary Brown, Harold Nelthrope and Walt Harris.

After learning that Stefani, who represented the former officers, had obtained steamy text messages pointing to perjury and a romantic relationship between Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, McCargo and others quickly settled a case the mayor had vowed to appeal, and struck a secret deal to keep the text messages under wraps.

It all came apart when Stefani, who signed a confidentiality agreement, leaked a computer disk containing the text messages to the Detroit Free Press.

Kilpatrick had to resign as mayor and served 99 days in jail for his false testimony at the trial of Brown and Nelthrope. Beatty also lost her job and did jail time.

Two versions of settlement

Beginning with McCargo, attorneys involved in the case are now being held accountable.

In describing the “perfect storm” the text message scandal created, the panel said:

“Kilpatrick and Beatty were trying to maintain their secrets (and were willing to falsely testify under oath to do so); Stefani was willing to do anything (including violating court orders, ignoring court rules, and providing false testimony to this panel) to protect his clients’ multimillion-dollar judgment and expose Kilpatrick’s affair with Beatty; and various attorneys in the city’s law department kept relevant facts from their colleagues or apparently did not want to confront their ultimate boss (Kilpatrick) even at the expense of their true client (the citizens of the city of Detroit).”

Stefani, who testified at McCargo’s hearing that he did not know how the Free Press got the text messages and later admitted he provided them, could not be reached for comment Monday.

The panel said Stefani “was often disingenuous with us on important matters and that his testimony was chiefly designed to support his argument that he did not commit professional misconduct.”

As for McCargo, the panel said it did not doubt he “was acting in what he honestly believed was an appropriate and ethical course of action” from the time Stefani shocked him during a mediation session over attorney fees by showing him a brief quoting from sexually charged text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty.

“However, while this may be relevant to the level of discipline we impose, it does not negate the fact that he violated several rules of professional conduct,” the panel said. “McCargo would have been well-advised to seek advice from colleagues or ethics experts as events unfolded.”

Specifically, the panel found McCargo’s ethics violations included trying to cover up the secret settlement agreement, failing to report perjury, helping to cover up perjury, and responding falsely to ethics investigators as to when he first learned of a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Free Press. The panel heard evidence the FOIA request was the reason McCargo and attorneys decided to split the settlement of the whistle-blower cases into separate agreements — a sanitized version for public consumption and a “private” version that would be kept under wraps.

Cleared on other charges

The panel cleared McCargo of other ethics charges, including a serious allegation that he accepted money to cover up a crime. Though the panel said it believed Stefani violated an order from the judge hearing the whistle-blower case that the text messages were to be sent to the court, the panel cleared McCargo of an allegation he violated professional ethics by failing to report Stefani.

The panel said the evidence was clear that McCargo became aware Kilpatrick had committed perjury in the 2007 trial and he had a duty to report it.

While finding some of McCargo’s testimony lacked credibility, the panel also cited problems with the testimony of Colbert-Osamuede, another city lawyer. Former Corporation Counsel John Johnson, who also faces disciplinary proceedings, was criticized by the panel as “another example of less than ideal conduct by various attorneys involved in this matter.”

About the only attorney involved in the case who came out of the hearing unblemished was Ellen Ha of the city law department, who handled Freedom of Information Act requests and testified she had to leave a hearing room to vomit after learning of records related to the settlement that she failed to turn over because she did not know they existed. The panel found that Ha was a credible witness in the case and had the least reason to lie.

Larry Dubin, a law professor at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, said appeals of the Attorney Discipline Board go to the full board. Beyond that, a party can only seek to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court, he said.