Attorney Quits State Bar Amid Charges : Woodland Hills: The action halts an inquiry into allegations that he misused a client’s funds. He denies wrongdoing.

A Woodland Hills attorney with a history of professional problems has resigned from the State Bar amid charges that he misappropriated funds from a client injured in a car accident.

The action means that Edwin Cherney, a personal-injury lawyer, can no longer practice law in California. His resignation also halts the State Bar’s disciplinary proceedings against him.

The State Bar in January suspended Cherney, 67, from practice for one year in connection with two other cases, including one in which he botched a lawsuit on behalf of a man who contended that he was injured by toxic fumes.

In addition, Cherney was publicly reprimanded by the State Bar in 1989 for taking 3 1/2 years to settle a simple divorce case.

According to State Bar documents, Cherney was hired in March, 1989, by William Davey to represent him in a claim for damages stemming from a car accident. A graduate of the University of LaVerne College of Law in Encino, Cherney was licensed as a lawyer in 1972.

Davey’s injuries were treated by doctors at the Chatsworth Canoga Medical Group in Canoga Park. His case was later settled by Allstate Insurance for $8,750. Out of that sum, Cherney gave Davey $3,000 and placed $2,750 in a trust account to pay Chatsworth Canoga, the State Bar said.

The State Bar charged that Cherney failed to promptly pay the medical bills and that the account balance later fell below the amount withheld to pay Chatsworth Canoga. State Bar rules prohibit lawyers from dipping into client accounts for purposes unrelated to their cases, a spokeswoman said.

When Cherney eventually made out two checks in September, 1991, they bounced, according to State Bar documents.

In an interview, Cherney blamed the delay in payment on a former part-time secretary. He said he mailed out the doctors’ checks some months later after discovering that they had not been sent.

He said that he handled “a slew of personal injury cases” and that “occasionally you make a boo-boo.” He added that balances in his client accounts were “always fluctuating.”

“They call that misappropriation. I never looked at it that way,” he said.

Cherney was suspended from practicing law earlier this year in part for his handling of a personal-injury suit by a man who claimed that he was injured by inhaling toxic fumes on the job.

The man, Luz Parra, filed suit in 1983 against two trucking companies and the owners of one. But Cherney failed to serve one firm with a summons or file court documents showing that he had served other defendants, according to State Bar documents.

The defendants later asked the court to dismiss the suit because they had not been served and Cherney did not show up at a court hearing on the matter. As a result, a judge threw out the suit.

Cherney never informed Parra of the dismissal and took no action to revive the suit. Although Parra phoned him at least 75 times between 1985 and 1990 to discuss his suit, Cherney returned only “three or four of these phone calls,” the State Bar said.

In 1989, Cherney was reprimanded by the State Bar for taking 3 1/2 years to resolve a divorce case that was “neither vigorously contested nor complex,” the State Bar said.

He had been hired by a woman in January, 1984, but did not file papers for a final judgment until July, 1987, and only after the State Bar had intervened, a spokeswoman said.