State bar suspends local lawyer

A Lynchburg attorney has been suspended for a year and a half by the Virginia State Bar after failing to meet the terms of a monthlong suspension last fall.

Peter Sackett’s suspension comes after a series of disciplinary actions by the state bar starting in 2007.

When his license was suspended for a month last October, Sackett was required to provide notice of the suspension. One of his clients in a civil case in Campbell County, however, complained to the bar she only learned about the suspension after reading about it in the newspaper, according to bar records.

The bar’s disciplinary board found in August that although he maintained he notified the woman, he couldn’t prove it, and that he didn’t notify the judge or the other attorney in the case, according to bar documents.

The board also found that he did not respond to his clients’ questions about the matter or the upheaval caused when they feared his suspension would cause them to miss an important deadline in the case.

Sackett said in an e-mail Wednesday he would not comment about the latest suspension until he could notify his clients.

Renu Brennan, the bar lawyer who investigated the case, said Sackett told the disciplinary committee the previous monthlong suspension hurt his practice and that 18 months could kill it altogether.

“Generally speaking, an 18-month suspension is a huge burden,” said Ned Davis, another lawyer for the state bar. “It’s hard for lawyers to come back from that.”

Sackett was reprimanded in 2007 for accounting problems with a trust account, money entrusted to him in a financial transaction pending a legal resolution. He was suspended last year for failing to meet the bar’s accounting requirements.

The bar reprimanded him again in September 2008 for a similar accounting problem.

His newest suspension begins Oct. 1.