Father-and-son Fort Lauderdale lawyers face discipline for impugning a judge
Impugning a judge’s integrity during a family vs. family case will get a pair of Fort Lauderdale attorneys disciplined by the state Supreme Court.
Matthew Herman’s 30-day suspension starts Monday. Herman’s father and the other lawyer at The Herman Law Group, Bruce Herman, wants a review of the referee’s report that recommended the state Supreme Court slap him with a six-month suspension.
As has Matthew Herman, a Florida Bar member since 2010, Bruce Herman has had a clean discipline record since joining the Bar in 1978.
The actions in the Florida Bar complaints occurred during Broward County case No. CACE22004734, The Herman Law Group vs. Peter Herman, an ongoing legal civil war between the father-son team and Bruce’s brother, attorney Peter Herman.
What follows comes from documents filed in the Broward civil case and in the Matthew Herman and Bruce Herman professional discipline cases.
READ MORE: Rape charges got a Florida attorney suspended. He’ll get more punishment soon
Friends and family
The Herman Law Group sued Peter Herman on March 31, 2022, claiming Peter promised to pay the firm back for money spent on him during his 2015 to 2020 stint at the firm. , On July 19, 2023, The Herman Law Group filed a motion to disqualify Broward Circuit Judge Carlos Rodriguez.
The motion said Matthew Herman recalled that Peter Herman told him “several years before” about a “Judge Rodriguez” with whom he played football with at Fort Lauderdale High and said his uncle bragged, “If I ever get Judge Rodriguez as a judge in any of my cases, I’m golden.”
A later filing by Matthew Herman said, “This statement by Peter took place several years earlier in respect to a case involving Peter’s mother and Matthew ‘s grandmother, where the deceased had been negligently cremated.”
An affidavit from Peter Herman said while he and Rodriguez had been at Fort Lauderdale High 47 years ago, he’s had cases before high school, college and law school classmates, and no one requested disqualification. Also, so many decades later, Peter Herman claimed he wouldn’t even remember if Judge Rodriguez played football, so he wouldn’t have said anything like that.
“It’s also a patently false and reckless statement to say I have a long term, close, personal social relationship with Judge Rodriguez,” Peter Herman’s affidavit stated.
Rodriguez not only rejected the disqualification motion, he said it contained “several false and spurious sworn allegations directed at the Court.”
If true, that would count as perjury. So, Rodriguez did what he said state statutes demanded: referred the alleged perjury to the Broward County State Attorney for investigation and disqualified himself “sua sponte” (of his own accord without prompting).
The Herman Law Group twice tried — and failed — to get the next judge, Keathan Frink, disqualified from the case.
The referee’s report
Judge Gerard J. Curley, Jr. of Florida’s 15th Judicial Circuit drew the referee’s assignment for both Hermans’ discipline cases. Curley drew a difference between Bruce Herman, who was the lead counsel in the case and was the only one involved in trying to disqualify Frink, and Matthew Herman.
Before Curley, Matthew Herman said his motion had “no intent to impugn” Rodriguez and maybe he should have drafted the motion more cautiously. Curley’s report also quoted Matthew Herman as saying he was “sorry for the way [Rodriguez] took it or understood it to be.”
Curley wrote: “This statement does not constitute acceptance of responsibility. Rather, it diminishes respondent’s own conduct while implicitly suggesting that the judge overreacted or misinterpreted respondent’s allegations.”
Also, Curley found Matthew Herman almost refusing to accept the seriousness of making unsupported accusations against judges.
Also, Matthew Herman “further complained these disciplinary proceedings had ‘tarnished [his] otherwise stellar reputation’ because Internet searches now associate him with his own actions,” Curley’s report said. “When confronted with the inverse — that his own verified allegations potentially harmed Judge Rodriguez’s reputation — [Herman] minimized the impact, stating there was ‘no harm in recusal,’ that he was ‘regretful [Judge Rodriguez] took it that way,’ and that it was ‘simply a recusal.’ ”
Bruce Herman also expressed dismay that the discipline hearings received public notice, complaining a $4 million closing was among lost business.
“He stated that ‘We look like bad guys’,“ Curley’s report said, “and further complained that the Daily Business Review had ‘rigged’ Google searches so that these disciplinary proceedings appear prominently on the first page of search results associated with his name.”
Curley noted Bruce Herman complained about official, public decisions about him while he took a shot at a judge’s integrity “based solely on subjective suspicions and dissatisfaction with judicial rulings.”
Asked why he refused to attend court-ordered depositions, Bruce Herman claimed fear of violent actions from his brother. But, Curley’s report said, he “admitted he has shared an office suite with his brother for years” since before the lawsuit.
The Bar wanted Matthew and Bruce Herman each suspended for a year. The Hermans wanted each suspension “brief and measured in days, not months.”
Curley recommended Matthew Herman be suspended for the 30 days that begins Monday. But, for Bruce Herman, Curley found several aggravating factors, among them “disregard for the truth and selfish motive” and “refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of the conduct.” Bruce Herman is fighting a six-month suspension.
