In the Matter of Charles Bruce Singleton, Jr

Charles Bruce Singleton, Jr., a Georgia lawyer since 1996, was accused by the State Bar of mishandling three separate client matters. He stopped communicating with a man whose mother's estate he was hired to probate, failed to protect a woman from a default judgment and lien in a credit card lawsuit, and, most seriously, kept over $35,000 in settlement money belonging to an injured minor even after a court held him in contempt and jailed him for it. A Special Master and then the State Disciplinary Review Board both found that Singleton violated several rules of professional conduct, including failing to communicate with clients, failing to do the work he was hired for, and mishandling client funds. Singleton did not challenge the Review Board's recommendation before the Supreme Court of Georgia. The court reviewed the record, agreed that his conduct violated the rules, and ordered him disbarred.

The court held that Singleton's failures to communicate with and perform work for clients, his failure to refund unearned fees, and his conversion of a minor's settlement funds for personal use violated multiple rules of professional conduct, and that disbarment, not a lesser sanction, was the appropriate punishment given the seriousness and pattern of the misconduct.

The ruling removes Singleton from the practice of law in Georgia, protecting future clients from similar harm, and reinforces that Georgia lawyers who abandon clients, ignore court orders, and misuse client money face the most severe professional consequence available.

Disbarred

1. The court applied the ABA Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions, a framework that weighs the duty violated, the lawyer's mental state, the injury caused, and any aggravating or mitigating factors to decide the right punishment.
2. The Special Master found Singleton acted knowingly rather than by mere carelessness, because he was aware clients were trying to reach him and knew he had not done the work he was paid for, including knowingly using a minor's settlement money for himself.
3. The court found real harm to each client: one client's credit suffered and she could not refinance her home, another faced delays resolving his mother's estate, and an injured minor was deprived of settlement funds he was owed.
4. Aggravating factors, including a prior disciplinary reprimand, a dishonest motive, a pattern of misconduct across three matters, vulnerable clients, and Singleton's failure to make restitution, outweighed the two mitigating factors of personal hardship and remorse.
5. Because disbarment was already warranted based on the clearest rule violations, the court did not need to separately decide whether Singleton also violated the rule against disrupting a tribunal, following its practice of skipping unnecessary rule questions once disbarment is justified.
6. Comparing Singleton's conduct to similar past disbarment cases involving attorneys who abandoned clients and converted client funds, the court concluded disbarment was consistent with how it has handled comparable misconduct.

• attorney disbarment
• State Bar of Georgia
• client fund misappropriation
• legal malpractice
• settlement funds