State Bar Wants Missing Lawyer’s Case Files : Courts: She has gone into hiding and is under investigation for alleged misappropriation of funds. Her caseload is a point of contention with another attorney.

The California State Bar has taken temporary custody of the case files of a Glendale attorney who went into hiding eight months ago and has come under investigation for allegedly misappropriating client funds.

A Glendale Superior Court judge is scheduled today to consider the bar’s request to permanently take charge of the files of Patricia Rutherford, 42, an immigration and personal injury lawyer who has not been in her law office since December.

Amid widely divergent speculation about the reason for Rutherford’s disappearance, her absence has led to a bitter dispute between an attorney who worked for her and the rest of her office staff over access to her cases, court records show.

Leigh Datzker, a Calabasas attorney who is representing Rutherford and her office staff in the dispute over the files, said the missing attorney is “in seclusion” because a former client threatened her life, and she believed the client “could make the threat real.”

Datzker said that Rutherford is also battling life-threatening cancer. In her absence, he said, a young attorney she hired shortly before her disappearance has tried to steal her cases. Datzker said Rutherford is not opposing the bar’s intervention.

Susan Scott, a spokeswoman for the State Bar, said bar officials have “no direct knowledge of any death threats” against Rutherford. But in their request to take over her case files, bar officials said they had contacted Rutherford’s friends and family members, and none of them know where she is.

Scott said that the bar has an obligation to ensure that Rutherford’s clients are represented in their pending cases. She said the bar plans to contact Rutherford’s clients, who number at least 100, to notify them of the situation, and to tell them that they need to find new lawyers.

“It’s a move to protect the clients,” Scott said. “They have been abandoned by their attorney.”

Around the time of her disappearance, Rutherford was under investigation by the bar for allegedly misappropriating settlement money owed to two clients. In a complaint filed in State Bar Court on May 26, she was accused of misusing $30,000 that was due to clients in two cases. The complaint is still pending.

Paul Caruso, a criminal lawyer who is representing Rutherford in the misappropriation matter, declined to comment. But Datzker said Rutherford’s decision to go into hiding was not connected to the State Bar case.

“She’s not running away from any State Bar action,” he said. “The State Bar charges came in way after she had gone into seclusion.”

Rutherford owned a small but busy law practice in Glendale, which she ran with an office staff of three. About a year ago, she hired a young attorney, Paul D. Fitzgerald, on a salary to help her with her personal injury cases while she had a baby and was being treated for cancer, court records show.

In a Glendale Superior Court declaration filed earlier this month, Fitzgerald said that the last time he saw or talked to his boss was last December, when she told him that she was going with her entire family to New York to receive cancer treatment.

Several months later, Fitzgerald said in his declaration, he was contacted by a private investigator who claimed that Rutherford was in “very serious trouble” because she had stolen $2 million to $3 million in drugs from drug dealers.

But Datzker dismissed Fitzgerald’s court declaration as an “unfounded attempt to discredit” Rutherford by a young upstart trying to take over the practice in her absence.

Although Datzker said he did not know the circumstances surrounding the death threats, he said, “There is no substantiation that Ms. Rutherford was involved in any sort of drug dealing or criminal activity.”

Datzker did say, however, that he believes that the person who threatened Rutherford “has the ability to deliver.” Datzker also said he does not know how to contact Rutherford, and that she initiates any communication between them.

Despite Rutherford’s health and security problems, Datzker said, she was trying to continue her law practice, with Fitzgerald and the rest of the staff running the day-to-day operations.

But Datzker said that Fitzgerald decided he wanted to open his own office and use Rutherford’s cases as a base for his practice.

In an interview Tuesday, Fitzgerald denied that he tried to take over Rutherford’s cases and said he was only concerned with protecting the clients.

Court records show that tensions between Fitzgerald and the rest of the office staff came to a head earlier this summer after he settled a large case. Fitzgerald decided that he was entitled to keep a larger percentage of the settlement than had been agreed upon with Rutherford before she disappeared.

“I did all the work on the file,” Fitzgerald said. “I felt I was entitled to more money.”

As the interoffice dispute heated up, both sides contacted lawyers, who took steps to secure Rutherford ‘s caseload.

Fitzgerald’s attorney, David Cordier, obtained a temporary restraining order on June 24, barring removal of the files from Rutherford’s office. That night, Datzker said in a court declaration, Cordier and Fitzgerald slipped into Rutherford’s office and removed dozens of files.

“What has happened here is an attempt by (Fitzgerald) and his attorney to abscond with (Rutherford’s) lucrative personal injury files and to establish a new law firm,” Datzker said in the court documents.

When the State Bar was granted temporary custody of the files earlier this month, Cordier was ordered to turn the files over to the Glendale Bar Assn. Volunteer attorneys from the Glendale Bar will be responsible for contacting Rutherford’s clients. Scott also said that the State Bar will continue to pursue its disciplinary proceedings against Rutherford.