Conflict of Interest Controversy
While serving as a public defender in San Francisco, Gonzalez took a month-long paid leave of absence to act as co-counsel for a corporation, Cobra Solutions, in its $16 million lawsuit against San Francisco, Gonzalez's employer. In the lawsuit, Gonzalez gave the opening arguments and cross-examined witnesses. The San Francisco Public Defender's office rules of ethics states: "No employee may provide legal advice or legal representation...to any person or entity other than in the employee's official capacity." Said Peter Keene, former chief assistant public defender and dean emeritus at the Golden Gate University Law School, "I'm totally flabbergasted. It is totally out of line. It is not only a complete conflict, it flies in the face of your loyalty to your main employer, the city. Matt shouldn't be doing it."
Read more about this topic: Matt Gonzalez
Famous quotes containing the words conflict, interest and/or controversy:
“Affection, indulgence, and humor alike are powerless against the instinct of children to rebel. It is essential to their minds and their wills as exercise is to their bodies. If they have no reasons, they will invent them, like nations bound on war. It is hard to imagine families limp enough always to be at peace. Wherever there is character there will be conflict. The best that children and parents can hope for is that the wounds of their conflict may not be too deep or too lasting.”
—New York State Division of Youth Newsletter (20th century)
“The interest in Wisdom is fading. Soon there will not be enough left to support the aphorism, even though it tries to amuse by half-mocking the Wisdom it propounds.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)