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Attorney's Response To A Zelle Typo Could Be A Stain On Her Career

Would have never happened on Cash App.

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1076962Collecting on the money you are owed is one of the most important aspects of running a successful practice. That said, there are a few times when trusting that the money will get back to you is actually the smart move. A lawyer from Ohio is facing an ethics complaint after handling a Zelle typo so poorly that it reads more like a Lonely Island song premise than something you’d hear a reasonable person out on. The ABA Journal has coverage:

Christine Baker had intended to send $550 to her husband, Zachary Reynolds, on Sept. 19 and 20 in 2023. Instead, she typed an email address that apparently differed from her husband’s by one character and sent the money to an Illinois resident named Zack Reynolds, the ethics complaint says.
…
By Sept. 22, 2023, Baker had learned Illinois Reynolds’ cellphone number, email address, personal address, employer, charity affiliations, wife’s identity, contact information for his wife’s employer and his wife’s email address.

Barring some Contract restatement that makes it clear typing the wrong email in Zelle entitles you to lightly stalk your victim, it seems like the reasonable thing to do would be to contact your bank, inform them of your error and let them do the rectifying. But why do literally nothing when you could do the most instead? The complaint alleges that Baker decided to reach out to Zack Reynolds (the wrong one) and pelt him with orders and lawsuit threats. These include but aren’t limited to:

• A text to Illinois Reynolds, telling him that his retention of the money is “unlawful,” and if he did not return the money in 24 hours, “collection, garnishment and all available recovery methods will commence, including notifying your employer of your conduct.”

• Another text threatening to sue Illinois Reynolds, informing him that he is a “thief,” threatening to tell a charity affiliated with Reynolds that he committed a “theft,” and saying she should share the information with “anyone with a basic internet connection.”

• Yet another text telling Illinois Reynolds that he and his wife were being named in a civil action for unjust enrichment. The text included an address thought to be his “in an effort to intimidate” him and his wife, according to the complaint.

If you are going to shame and blackmail someone over a mistake they played no real role in, it should be over way more than $550! According to the record, Zack Reynolds was advised by his bank’s fraud department and his attorney to let his bank handle it. And they did — Baker got her money back within two weeks of her initial screw-up. It should have ended there, but she filed a lawsuit on October 30th this year arguing that she is owed over $15k in damages that ultimately got her in trouble. The next day, an ethics complaint was filed that alleged she filed a lawsuit with false statements without basis in law or fact.

This is why it is important to have good friends who you can bounce ideas off of. Hell, a quick skim of the Art of War in a pinch. Maybe, just maybe, then it would have clicked that spending more value in man hours than the cost of the thing sought is a waste of time and money. That’s time you could have spent on a client’s matter, developing your book of business, or even catching up on SNL cold opens. Getting the $550 back in early October was a prime moment to deescalate and cut losses. You might not have gotten your vengeance, but you could have had peace of mind. Now you’ve got an ethics complaint to deal with — something people would easily pay a couple hundred bucks to avoid altogether.

Lawyer’s Mistaken Zelle Transfer Leads To Ethics Complaint [ABA Journal]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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