PORTLAND — A judge has ruled district attorney candidate Seth T. Carey violated several Maine Bar Rules, including unlawful conduct stemming from his unwanted sexual advances involving a woman who lived in his Rumford home.
Seth T. Carey looks to supporters during his hearing in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland on Aug. 16. (Sun Journal file photo)
“In this case, the court concludes that the nature of the conduct in question reflects adversely on Carey’s trustworthiness and fitness as a lawyer,” Justice Thomas Warren wrote in his 18-page order on the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar petition against Carey.
The judge’s decision comes a month after a three-day hearing at which bar counsel for the board presented its case in support of sanctions against Carey, including disbarment.
The board’s attorneys presented evidence and witnesses, including a woman who claimed that Carey had made persistent unwanted sexual advances and evicted her after she repeatedly rebuffed him and recorded the wrong basketball game for him one time.
Seeking a protection from abuse order against Carey, his then-tenant took him to court in April where, after a four-hour hearing, was granted the order after a judge had found by a preponderance of evidence that Carey had engaged in unlawful sexual touching and domestic violence assault. Carey had represented himself at that hearing.
Carey, 43, who lives in Auburn, but owns a house in Rumford, was suspended from practicing law in Maine in 2016, but was able to get that suspension lifted by agreeing to specific conditions. In April, the board filed a petition for his immediate suspension in connection with the claims made by the woman who lived at his home. The court ordered an interim suspension after reviewing the evidence presented in district court during the protection from abuse hearing.
In his recent findings filed Friday, Warren focused on three events that took place at Carey’s Rumford house.
During Thanksgiving 2017, the woman was awakened in the middle of the night to find Carey’s hands touching her legs and between her thighs. He suggested she sleep with him. She told him to leave her room. He did.
In 2018, Carey tried to pull the woman into his bedroom and proposed having sex. Another time, the woman was sitting on the couch when Carey “stepped in front of her, pulled her head against his crotch and in crude terms requested oral sex.”
Warren also ruled that Carey violated bar rules by failing to comply with his interim suspension order when he, among other violations, continued to represent a party in a case against the town of Dexter on two occasions after the date of his suspension even though he claimed he was acting as a paralegal.
“The court finds that Carey was not just tiptoeing along the line with respect to his suspension, but that he stepped over the line.
In another case, he sent emails in May and June, well past the date of his suspension, under the email address “Seth T. Carey, Esq.” and he was still communicating with opposing counsel on the case.
He wrote checks on his law office account despite the fact a receiver had been appointed to take over his accounts.
On video ads for his bid for the Republican nomination for district attorney, he was referred to as “Republican attorney” even though the ads ran after his suspension.
Warren wrote in his order that, if elected district attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties in November, where he were to make prosecutorial decisions, set policy and supervise the lawyers in the District Attorney’s Office, he would be practicing law whether or not he ever appeared in court.
In another violation of bar rules, Carey tampered with a victim when he drafted a nondisclosure agreement for the woman to sign in exchange for the title to his vehicle. The woman would seek to vacate the protection-from-abuse order and file a motion saying she had not been abused by Carey and seek to vacate the board’s complaint against him.
If his license were to be reinstated by Oct. 1, he would give the woman $1,000, Carey had offered.
“His conduct was prejudicial to the administration of justice,” Warren wrote.
Moreover, Carey had violated bar rules by failing to follow the recommendation of a clinical psychologist that Carey consult with a licensed psychiatrist and comply with any recommended psychiatric medications for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as part of Carey’s 2016 suspension conditions.
A hearing on which, if any, sanctions should be imposed on Carey for these bar violations is expected to be scheduled by the court.
Carey won the Republican primary in June, beating Alexander Willette.
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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