JEFFERSON CITY (St. Louis Record) — A Plattsburg attorney has been disbarred and former Gov. Matthew Roy Blunt's deputy legal counsel, currently living in Utah, has been reprimanded in separate orders recently handed down by the Missouri Supreme Court.
Plattsburg attorney Christy Lea Fisher has been disbarred and Scott J. Eckersley has been reprimanded following respective May 4 and May 10 orders.
The state high court found Fisher in violation of professional conduct rule that governs competence, diligence, communication, safekeeping property, declining or terminating representation and misconduct, according to the order in her matter.
The court denied Fisher's request for a retroactive disbarment date and ordered her to pay $2,000 to the Advisory Committee Fund, in addition to all costs in the proceeding.
In May 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court placed Fisher on immediate interim suspension, ruling she "poses a substantial threat of irreparable harm to the public and to the integrity of the profession".
The court's order reprimanding Eckersley, living in Midway, Utah, followed a chief disciplinary counsel's notice that the former Blunt legal official failed to attend a hearing that followed an investigation. The investigation found "that there is probable cause to believe respondent Scott J. Eckersley is guilty of professional misconduct" and the state Supreme Court found him in default, the state high court's order said.
Eckersley's time as deputy general counsel and policy adviser Blunt, a Republican in office from 2005 to 2009, was marred his firing by the then governor's chief of staff and by a complaint filed with the office of disciplinary counsel alleging Eckersley had violated legal ethics codes. The office of chief disciplinary counsel cleared Eckersley in 2009. Eckersley also filed a defamation lawsuit, which reportedly was settled for about $500,000.
In 2010, Eckersley ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for Missouri’s Seventh Congressional District seat, losing to current U.S. Rep. Billy Long.
More recently, Eckersley was arrested in June 2015 and charged under Utah's commercial terrorism statute for stealing tourism brochures out of stands in Midway. Eckersley reportedly cut a deal with prosecutors and entered a plea in abeyance to two misdemeanor charges of commercial obstruction, which were later dismissed. In August 2017 he filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Wasatch County, Utah, law enforcement and prosecutors in that case.