Jumping on the anti-spam bandwagon, the Supreme Court of Tennessee has disbarred Laurence Canter, an immigration lawyer-cum-notorious spammer, in part for illegal advertising practices.
"We disbarred him and gave him a one-year sentence just to emphasize that his email campaign was a particularly egregious offense," said William W. Hunt III of the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility. Hunt said he believes that Canter, who was disciplined last month, is the first attorney disciplined for illegal advertising on the Net.
Canter was also disciplined for failing to adequately communicate with two clients, and charging one an improper nonrefundable retainer and refusing to return his file.
An attorney with offices in California, Arizona, and Tennessee, Canter - aka the Faust of the Internet - also has the dubious distinction of offending Internet users to such a degree that he reputedly provoked the practice of online blacklisting. In the wake of some 10,000 unsolicited emails Canter sent to entirely unrelated listservs and Usenet groups, Axel Boldt, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, created the seminal Blacklist of Internet Advertisers.
As for what the Tennessee court's June decision means for others looking for a way to stop the ever-increasing flood of online junk mail, the jury's still out. A buzz has started on a listserv devoted to discussing possible grounds for anti-spam legal action.
"The court decided to add the one-year suspension to create the possibility that this might be useful as a precedent," said Hunt, "but what effect that'll have outside the legal profession is unclear." The laws governing legal advertising are much stricter than those governing other types of marketing.
Canter's disbarment will keep him from practicing in Tennessee for at least five years, and may carry over into Arizona and California thanks to reciprocal policies governing admission to the bar.
"His situation is like Mike Tyson's," Hunt said, referring to the boxer whose license was revoked by Nevada on Wednesday. "After a certain period of time, he can reapply for admission, but there's no guarantee at all that he'll ever be able to work in his chosen profession again."
