People v. Curtis R. Smelser. 20PDJ002. January 14, 2020. The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties’ conditional admission of misconduct and publicly censured Curtis R. Smelser (attorney registration number 41689).
Smelser represented a client who was under contract to sell his residence. About a month before the closing, Smelser was alerted to an error in the property’s legal description of the quit claim deed. In order to sell the residence, Respondent’s client needed a correction deed from his ex-wife. Smelser contacted the lawyer for the ex-wife on at least four occasions over the course of two weeks. Although the lawyer eventually responded to Smelser, he was not able to obtained the ex-wife’s signature on the correction deed. Frustrated by the situation, Smelser sent an email directly to the ex-wife, without copying the lawyer, asking her to sign the correction deed.
Through this conduct, Smelser violated Colo. RPC 4.2 (restricting the circumstances in which a lawyer may communicate about the subject of a client representation with a person the lawyer knows to be represented by counsel in the matter).
The case file is public per C.R.C.P. 251.31.