LOUISVILLE, Ky. — His license suspended and facing a possible fine or incarceration, a defiant Eric Deters told the Kentucky Bar Association he will "never shut up about the KBA and the legal system and I will always work in law.
“No one can stop me from doing that,” he said in a six-page response filed Tuesday at the Kentucky Supreme Court.
The bar asked the court to sanction Deters and hold him in contempt for defying orders to stop practicing law.
The motion came after The Courier Journal described how Deters had masterminded unsuccessful federal anti-vaccination suits in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati despite being suspended from the practice of law for eight years.
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In a video of his “Bulldog Show,” he boasted to prospective clients: “I’m able to work on your case no matter what. So when you come to Deters Law, you get the bulldog and the team that I assembled.”
Deters showed neither remorse nor contrition in his response to the Bar Association, filed Tuesday.
“If I am guilty of unauthorized practice of law — and I’m not — a prosecutor can charge me,” he said. “I welcome the jury trial.”
“The KBA acts as if they control me for the rest of my life. They don’t.”
Deters, who has tangled with lawyer regulators for years, claims his role as a paralegal in his Independence, Kentucky, law firm is approved by Ohio bar counsel. But in August the Ohio Supreme Court fined him $6,500 for giving legal advice to two clients and holding himself out as an attorney.
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He claims he retired as an Ohio attorney in 2014 and has retired in Kentucky as well, and the rules he is accused of violating here apply only to suspended lawyers.
“I am a retired lawyer,” he said. “Everyone has the right to retire. Period.”
No date has been set for a hearing on the contempt motion.
The Courier Journal has reported that Deters describes himself as a “legal outlaw” and once called Kentucky bar officials “jokes of human excrement” and the Kentucky Supreme Court "the seven dwarfs."
Refusing to reinstate him in June, that court said Deters had a “notorious propensity” for filing malicious and frivolous lawsuits and seemed unable to control himself.
“Deters’ practice of law is not governed by constitution, rule of law or procedure,” the court said. “It is anarchy.”
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But Deters says he has the right to work in the Kenton County building that houses the Deters law firm.
“I own it,” he said.
Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; [email protected]; Twitter: @adwolfson.
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