A public defender for a Burlington County borough who was censured a little more than a year ago is facing two (now three) new ethics charges arising out legal work done outside the scope of her municipal duties.
The lawyer facing the charges is Mary E. Lenti of Mount Holly who serves as public defender for Pemberton Borough (Burlington County). The Borough reappointed her to that office in 2024 by way of Resolution 2024-10.
UPDATE 02/29/2024: On October 9, 2023, after this article was originally published, a third ethics complaint, captioned District III Ethics Committee v. Mary E. Lenti, Docket No. IIIB-2022-0026E was filed. An explanation of the new matter is set forth further below.
Docket No. IIIB-2022-0005E
The first matter is District IIIB Ethics Committee v. Lenti, Docket No. IIIB-2022-0005E which was filed against Mount Holly attorney Mary Elizabeth Lenti on February 22, 2023. The ethics complaint, to which Lenti has not yet filed an answer (see update below), can be downloaded here.
According to the complaint, Lenti made a commitment to a client, assuring him that she would file a motion on his behalf. However, she failed to fulfill this promise and did not actually submit the motion. Furthermore, the complaint asserts that Lenti later confessed to ethics authorities, acknowledging not only her failure to file the motion but also her misleading the client by falsely claiming that two court dates had been scheduled when, in fact, they had not.
UPDATE 02/29/2024: On August 22, 2023, District IIIB Secretary John M. Hanamirian filed a certification with the Office of Attorney ethics affirming that Lenti had defaulted by failing to answer the ethics complaint. According to Court Rule 1:20-4(f), a lawyer’s failure to answer an ethics complaint is “deemed an admission that the allegations of the complaint are true and that they provide a sufficient basis for the imposition of discipline. No further proof hearing shall be required.” Hanamirian confirmed he delivered the ethics complaint to Lenti via both certified and regular mail on several dates: March 3, 2023, May 15, 2023, June 15, 2023, and July 11, 2023. He stated that despite these efforts, no answer or formal response has been received from Lenti or on her behalf.
Docket No. XIV-2021-0204E
The second matter is Office of Attorney Ethics v. Lenti, Docket No. XIV-2021-0204E and IIIB-2022-900E which was filed against Lenti on June 3, 2022. Both the ethics complaint and Lenti’s answer can be downloaded here.
Attorneys operating limited liability companies are required by court rules to maintain professional malpractice insurance and submit certificates of insurance to the Clerk of the Supreme Court annually. However, according to the ethics complaint, attorney Lenti failed to respond to the Clerk’s requests for her certificate of insurance on four occasions over a five-month period in 2021. As a result, the Clerk reported Lenti’s repeated failures to respond to the Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE) in June 2021.
Over the next six months, the OAE repeatedly requested the certificates from Lenti. Although she did provide responses to the OAE, she either submitted incorrect or inadequate documents, as stated in the complaint. It wasn’t until December 30, 2021, that Lenti finally submitted the required certificates to both the OAE and the Clerk. The ethics complaint accuses Lenti of “failure to cooperate with disciplinary authorities.”
In Lenti’s response to the ethics complaint on September 12, 2022, she admitted to the factual allegations but presented mitigating circumstances. Lenti explained that she had sent her insurance policy (though not the certificates) to the Administrative Office of the Courts instead of the Clerk of the Supreme Court. She claimed to have been unaware of the annual requirement to file insurance certificates with the Clerk. Lenti apologized for her behavior and clarified that she did not intend to prolong the matter or mislead OAE investigators. She acknowledged that her conduct was “poor behavior on [her] part.”
UPDATE 02/29/2024: In a September 15, 2023 report, a Hearing Panel consisting of attorneys Michael J. Wietrzychowski and Ryan Hurd and public member Rita Bohus recommended that Lenti be censured for her conduct. According to the report, Lenti appeared at an April 27, 2023 hearing and admitted that she had “put her head in the sand” regarding the insurance request and the matter was caused by her “carelessness, laziness and stupidity.” The panel found that Lenti “appeared contrite and took full responsibility for her actions.” The Panel considered recommending a reprimand, but opted for the more serious penalty of a censure because Lenti previously received a censure (see below). The matter is not final and will now be considered by the Disciplinary Review Board.
Docket No. IIIB-2022-0026E
The third matter is Office of Attorney Ethics v. Lenti, Docket No. IIIB-2022-0026E which was filed against Lenti on October 9, 2023. The ethics complaint can be downloaded here. The allegations in the complaint are summarized as follows. (Please note that there are all allegations that have not yet been proven to an ethics panel.)
Lenti represented the sister of a man who passed away in 2019. The man’s will called for the bulk of his estate to go to his long-time companion instead of his children. The sister, who felt that her brother’s children should inherit his estate, filed a caveat to put a hold on the will being probated.
About four months after filing the caveat, the sister hired Lenti as her attorney and asked her to take necessary action to ensure that her brother’s children inherited the estate. Lenti prepared a written retainer agreement and collected $2,000 from the sister.
For the next two years and five months, the sister repeatedly asked Lenti for updates on the case. Lenti responded that COVID-19 caused massive court delays and “repeatedly told [the sister] that she would check with the court and get back to her, suggesting, incorrectly, that some pleading had been filed.” During the process, Lenti refunded $1,000 of the retainer “saying that she felt bad that her proceeding for [the sister] was taking so long.”
On October 19, 2021, the sister received a letter from her brother’s long-time companion’s lawyer telling her that her caveat was frivolous and that unless she withdrew it, he would take legal action and seek sanctions. The sister forwarded the letter to Lenti and asked for her advice. Lenti did not discuss the implications or consequences of the lawyer’s letter with the sister.
On February 23, 2022, the companion’s lawyer filed a civil complaint that sought to dismiss the caveat, admit the will to probate and for his attorney fees. The sister forwarded the complaint to Lenti. Again, Lenti “did not discuss with [the sister] what [Lenti] considered the appropriate course of action in response to the action.” Lenti did, however, call the companion’s lawyer, advised him that she was the sister’s attorney and asked for a two-week adjournment of the hearing date, to which the companion’s lawyer agreed.
The court held the adjourned hearing on May 13, 2022. While the companion’s lawyer appeared, Lenti did not. The judge dismissed the caveat, admitted the will to probate and ordered that the companion’s lawyer’s fees be paid out of the estate.
On May 25, May 31, June 6, and June 10, 2022, the sister sent emails to Lenti asking if there had been any determination yet. Lenti’s first and only reply to those emails was on June 13, 2022, when she said, “I’m actually having another lawyer review the decision so they can give us their opinion on what we should appeal.” At this point, the sister filed an ethics grievance against Lenti.
Ethics investigator William G. Wright was assigned the sister’s case. He wrote to Lenti on December 30, 2022 for her response to the grievance. When Wright didn’t hear back from Lenti, he wrote to her again on February 8, 2023 and followed up with a phone call. Lenti returned Wright’s call and told him “that there was some dispute with her office landlord that was interfering with mail delivery and asking that the letter be sent to her home address.” On February 12, 2023, Wright sent his February 8th letter by both certified and regular mail to Lenti’s home address and asked for a response by February 21, 2023.
After not having received Lenti’s response, he wrote to her again on March 9, 2023. Lenti did not respond.
The ethics complaint charged Lenti with neglect of her client’s matter, failure to act with reasonable diligence and promptness, failure to keep her client informed, and failure to cooperate with ethics authorities.
On January 5, 2024, District IIIB Secretary John M. Hanamirian filed a certification with the Office of Attorney ethics affirming that Lenti had defaulted by failing to answer the ethics complaint. According to Court Rule 1:20-4(f), a lawyer’s failure to answer an ethics complaint is “deemed an admission that the allegations of the complaint are true and that they provide a sufficient basis for the imposition of discipline. No further proof hearing shall be required.” Hanamirian confirmed he delivered the ethics complaint to Lenti via both certified and regular mail to both Lenti’s office and home addresses on October 13, 2023. He certified that Lenti called him on November 3, 2023 to request a one-week extension but that she didn’t file her answer. He sent another letter to Lenti on December 14, 2023 but that didn’t result in Lenti filing an answer. He stated that despite these efforts, no answer or formal response has been received from Lenti or on her behalf.
Prior Discipline
These three complaints aren’t Lenti’s first scrape with ethics authorities. On April 1, 2022, she was censured by the New Jersey Supreme Court. The court found her guilty of several violations, including lack of diligence, failure to communicate with a client, failure to supervise a non-lawyer assistant, false statement of material fact in a disciplinary matter, and conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. As part of the censure, Lenti was ordered to pay $1,250 to a former client and reimburse the disciplinary system for administrative costs associated with prosecuting the complaint against her. The decision to censure Lenti was based on a recommendation from the Disciplinary Review Board (DRB), with six members voting for censure and three members voting for a three-month suspension of her law license. The DRB’s recommendation, spanning forty-three pages, reviewed Lenti’s conduct in three divorce cases, one custody case, and a probate case.
In the review, the DRB found that Lenti had not diligently pursued the claims of three clients. In one divorce case, she failed to file a motion for four weeks despite her client’s repeated attempts to contact her, as foreclosure on the marital residence was imminent. In another divorce case, she delayed filing necessary pleadings for approximately a year, and she also failed to submit her client’s custody application for five months. Lenti later admitted that the custody application “was insufficient and poorly prepared.”
In another divorce matter, the DRB found that Lenti failed to “communicate honestly and sufficiently” with her client. The client was under the impression that the case was progressing, unaware that it had been dismissed. Lenti had delegated the matter, including the preparation and filing of a request to enter default, to her paralegal, who had no relevant experience and failed to file the request, resulting in the dismissal of the client’s case.
Additionally, the DRB discovered that Lenti provided misleading information to an ethics investigator by falsely claiming that a motion had been filed in a divorce matter when it had not. She was also found to have made three false statements to one of her clients.
Considering Lenti’s misconduct, the DRB concluded that she had violated eleven Rules of Professional Conduct across five client matters, with three clients experiencing “egregious harm.” In terms of mitigation, the DRB noted that Lenti had no prior history of ethical violations, accepted responsibility for her actions, expressed genuine remorse, and did not personally benefit from her misconduct.
The three pending charges against Lenti are only allegations that have yet to be proven, although she has admitted to some of them and has defaulted on others. For the two cases that have not yet proceeded to a hearing, she will have an opportunity to have her matters heard by an ethics panel if she’s able to have her defaults excused. Like all ethics hearings, Lenti’s are open to the public. Anyone wishing to find out the dates and locations of any future hearings should contact District IIIB Ethics Committee Secretary John M. Hanamirian at 609-332-5252.
