Taft law firm should have disclosed conflict of interest, grievance says

COLUMBUS - The Taft law firm should have disclosed it had employed a state representative it was asked to investigate, according to an ethics grievance filed with the Ohio Supreme Court.

State Rep. Bill Seitz, who left the Cincinnati law firm in 2014, was accused of sexual harassment for offensive comments he made at a House GOP function. 

Taft Stettinius & Hollister served as a state contractor and investigated the complaint against Seitz – but had a conflict of interest because Seitz had worked there for 36 years, the grievance says. Taft's investigation cleared Seitz of the sexual harassment allegations.

Seitz left Taft in 2014 for Dinsmore & Shohl. Several Taft employees had donated to Seitz’s political campaign over the years, as had Taft’s PAC.

The subject of the grievance, Stuart Dornette, is a partner at Taft and happens to be the Cincinnati Bengals’ attorney. The accusation against him and Taft comes from Scott Peterson, executive director of Checks and Balances Project, a sustainability group that opposes Seitz’s position against Ohio’s clean energy standards.

The Ohio Supreme Court's office of disciplinary counsel will review the grievance to see if there is enough evidence to file a formal complaint, a rare step.

Taft declined to comment, saying the matter is pending.

To outsource state investigations is a common practice by the Ohio attorney general’s office. Dornette had received the assignment for the firm to be paid up to $12,000 to investigate the Seitz case for Attorney General Mike DeWine. He was not one of the attorneys doing the investigation, said Dan Tierney, a spokesman for DeWine.

Taft was “supposed to report to us conflicts,” said Dan Tierney, a spokesman for DeWine. “We were displeased that they didn’t let us know.”

Taft has about 450 employees in 10 offices. Seitz said he did not know the two attorneys who investigated the case, Janica Pierce Tucker and Carolyn Davis, both out of the firm’s Columbus office.

Although Dornette has donated to Seitz, neither of the investigating attorneys is listed among Seitz’s political donors since 2000, according to records held by the Ohio secretary of state. Pierce Tucker gave $57.63 to Taft’s PAC in 2015.

“I read this knucklehead’s complaint. There is absolutely nothing to it,” Seitz told The Enquirer. Someone at the attorney general’s office told him DeWine’s staffers knew he had worked at Taft, as did the investigating attorneys, Pierce Tucker and Davis. “None of them thought it was a conflict at all,” Seitz said.

Ohio has more than 44,000 registered attorneys, and the Supreme Court received grievances for 3,500 of them last year. Officials dismissed 40 percent of them and pursued investigations into the other 60 percent.

Only 71 of the grievances – 2 percent – resulted in formal complaints before Ohio’s Board of Professional Conduct. The board considered the cases and made final recommendations to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Last year, the Supreme Court sanctioned 41 attorneys. Punishments ranged from public reprimands to license suspensions to disbarments.

Enquirer reporter Jessie Balmert and the Associated Press contributed to this report.