Linney

— Petitioner seeks a review of disciplinary proceedings in which the Board of Governors of The State Bar has recommended that he be suspended for a period of nine months. This recommendation followed hearings before a local committee on an amended order which directed petitioner to show cause why he should not be disciplined on five charges. In its brief The State Bar relies on count three alone as the basis for its suspension recommendation. We therefore shall confine our discussion to the evidence and findings addressed to that count. It charged petitioner with giving false testimony and misleading the court in a hearing upon a petition filed by Howard S. Splane to have his mother, Minnie E. Splane, declared to be an incompetent person.

It appears that Minnie Splane, Jennie Price (her housekeeper) and Flora Schultz (her companion) in order to evade service of process, moved from place to place in California, Arizona and Nevada. As a result of concealment of their whereabouts, none of these persons was available as a witness during the trial of the incompetency matter, *689 which ran from April 4 to June 4, 1940. Throughout the trial the absent Minnie Splane was represented of…