Allen D. Brown and Greg Hayes v. Legal Foundation of Washington et al. (538 U.S. 216)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 26, 2003 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 538 U.S. 216 · 123 S. Ct. 1406
- Decided
- March 26, 2003
- Term
- October Term 2002
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. The State of Washington, like every other State in the Union, uses interest on lawyers’ trust accounts (IOLTA) to pay for legal services provided to the needy. Some IOLTA programs were created by statute, but in Washington, as in most other States, the IOLTA program was established by the State Supreme Court pursuant to its authority to regulate the practice of law. In Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156 (1998), a case involving the Texas IOLTA program, we held “that the interest income generated by funds held in IOLTA accounts is the ‘private property’ of the owner of the principal.” Id., at 172. We did not, however, express any opinion on the question whether the income had been “taken” by the State or “as to the amount of ‘just compensation,’ if any, due respondents.” Ibid. We now confront those questions. H-i. As we explained in Phillips, id., at 160-161, in the course of their legal practice, attorneys are frequently required to hold clients’ funds for various lengths of time. It has long been recognized that they have a professional and fiduciary obligation to avoid commingling their clients’ money with their own, but it is not unethical to pool several clients’ funds in a single trust account. Before 1980 client funds were typically held in non-interest-bearing federally insured checking accounts.…
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