A lawyer who smoked oxy next to a cop is among the disciplined from Miami to Palm Beach
Not talking to clients, dealing with substance abuse and getting extended suspensions for not doing as told while suspended put four Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach attorneys on the most recent monthly list of lawyers disciplined by the state Supreme Court.
In alphabetical order:
Alexander Brutvan, Boca Raton
Back on Jan. 9, 2021, Alexander Brutvan (admitted to the Florida Bar in 2015) stopped at the Coral Springs intersection of Westview and Riverside drives in his blue Infiniti SUV with its interior light on, a lighter under foil in his hand and a pipe in his mouth.
You don’t have to be a police detective to figure out what Brutvan was doing, but because the driver in the adjacent car was Coral Springs police detective Corey Logan, Brutvan was stopped when he pulled into a Publix parking lot. Brutvan admitted he had been smoking oxycodone he got from his father.
The charge of possession of oxycodone went away after Brutvan completed a drug treatment program. Professionally, he has received an admonishment from the state Supreme Court and been referred to Florida Lawyers Assistance, which monitors lawyers dealing with mental health or substance abuse problems.
READ MORE: South Florida attorneys being incompetent, stealing, working when suspended
Lisa Jacobs, Aventura
Lisa Jacobs’ time as a Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office felony division chief ended weeks after an April 2016 car crash with two kids as passengers, a crash that an arrest report said was fueled by three drinks at Outback Steakhouse. Jacobs resigned from the state attorney’s office, pleaded no contest to careless driving and went into a rehabilitation contract with Florida Lawyers Assistance.
Since then, Jacobs has been suspended twice more for actions related to alcohol, including a 2018 plea of no contest to a DUI. Her most recent suspension of 91 days came down on July 14, 2023, and began on Aug. 13, 2023.
READ MORE: Criminal fraudsters and an ex-prosecutor among disciplined Miami to Palm Beach lawyers
As with all attorney suspensions, Jacobs had to remove all signs she’s an attorney from places such as social media, websites and signs. She also had to notify all clients, tribunals, opposing counsels and the bars of which she’s a member about her suspension and provide the Florida Bar a sworn affidavit with the names and addresses of all parties given a copy of the suspension order.
The Florida Bar’s petition for contempt says it notified Jacobs on Aug. 22 that she’d neither removed all signs she’s an attorney nor turned over the affidavit. In response to an Oct. 31 Bar email restating Jacobs’ inaction, Jacobs’ attorney, Richard Baron, sent a Nov. 3 letter saying Jacobs told him that she’ll be finishing the affidavit and he’d get it to the Bar on Nov. 6.
Also, Baron’s letter said Jacobs told him she’d made the requested changes to her LinkedIn profile and was no longer on Lawyer.com.
As of April 9, the Bar said it still hadn’t received the affidavit and Jacobs’ two LinkedIn profiles remained in violation. One of the profiles, as of Wednesday, said she was a “retired attorney” but said under “Experience” she still worked as an attorney and the other said she remained a division chief at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
Jacobs is now suspended until May 29, 2025.
Emelike Nwosuocha, South Miami-Dade
Emelike Nwosuocha (admitted in 2008) got a six-month suspension last year after he refused to pay $5,310 in attorney’s fees awarded to the defendant after a lawsuit he filed for a plaintiff got slapped out of court with prejudice, a decision affirmed by the appeals court. Nwosuocha argued the case wasn’t frivolous and didn’t know why he was being charged attorney’s fees.
After the suspension, the Bar said Nwosuocha didn’t pay case costs, nor did he provide an affidavit listing everyone who needed to be informed of the suspension.
Nwosuocha said, “I dropped all my clients and advised them that I was suspended,” and he was having trouble paying his costs because he couldn’t get hired during his suspension.
That response, filed May 2 with an incorrect case number, refiled May 10 with the same problem and re-refiled May 16, got stricken as “untimely.”
Nwosuocha was found in contempt. His one-year suspension ends June 18, 2025.
Laitil Ovincy, Lake Worth
Laitil Ovincy, who joined the Bar in 2014, handles personal injury and immigration matters.
In 2016, Doumy Sainvil hired Ovincy to prevent his deportation and get him asylum. Ovincy was Sainvil’s attorney through hearings and Sainvil’s testimony in 2017. But, on June 18, 2018, a court ordered Sainvil’s deportation, a copy of which Ovincy received but he didn’t inform Sainvil about the decision until after the 30-day appeal period ended.
“Subsequently, Sainvil hired new counsel,. and his motion for reconsideration and waiver of the order of removal was granted,” Ovincy’s guilty plea in the discipline case said.
Gemima Joseph later hired Sainvil for an immigration case. After leaving Joseph in the dark about the case’s status and not discussing an April 2021 hearing with her, Joseph dumped Sainvil for another attorney.
These failures of diligence, communication and competence got Sainvil a public reprimand and ordered to the Florida Bar’s Ethics School and Professionalism Workshop.
