When an attorney who is a member of a congregation involved in a legal dispute becomes the attorney of record for those seeking to sue that church and its former pastor, does that constitute an ethical violation?
This is at the heart of a question now put to an Arkansas court in the matter of alleged sexual abuse at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock. The church, its former pastor and its insurer are asking the court to disqualify Joseph Gates, who now represents two former congregants in sexual-abuse suits against the church.
Joseph Gates
The church and its insurer claim Gates is “stuck within a briar patch of ethical constraints and inherent conflicts of interest,” according to a new report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
But Stark Ligon, former executive director of the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct, speaking on behalf of Gates, said the “evidence and information … does not support a reasonable conclusion” that Gates is ethically compromised.
At issue is whether Gates, who also is a former lay leader in the church but no longer a member there, ever had an attorney-client relationship with former Pastor Steven Smith or the church.
The church and its insurer claim Gates “made himself a witness in this matter by eliciting confidential information and providing legal advice” to Smith.
Gates says that’s a vast overstatement of what really happened. The pastor never shared any secrets with him, Gates said, and everything he knew “was the same or consistent with the information Smith and Immanuel were disseminating to the congregation.”
Gates and Smith had only one one-on-one meeting at a Starbucks near the church, Gates said. Other texts and emails “were that of a pastor and his congregant,” he explained.
As litigation proceeds against the church and its former pastor, they seek to have Gates disqualified from representing an accuser of former assistant children’s minister Patrick Stephen Miller and from representing an alleged victim of Reagan Danielle Gray, a former middle school teacher and Immanuel Baptist praise team member.
Miller originally was charged with second-degree sexual assault and pled guilty to misdemeanor harassment in January 2022; he was given a one-year suspended sentence, with 19 days’ credit for time served. He is now charged in a separate case with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of second-degree sexual assault. He has pleaded innocent and his trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 28.
In the other case Gray pleaded no contest in May to second-degree sexual assault involving the plaintiff and was placed on six years’ probation.
Gates stopped attending Immanuel in December 2023. Neither Smith nor Immanuel ever formally retained Gates or paid for his legal services.
According to the Democrat-Gazette, the motions to disqualify Gates happened only after settlement negotiations broke down this summer.
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