Wunsch

In this case we are called upon to determine whether the district court properly sanctioned an attorney for conduct that occurred outside the courtroom and after the attorney had ceased to represent any of the parties involved with the proceedings before the court. For the reasons that follow, we reverse.

FACTS AND PRIOR PROCEEDINGS

This matter arose during the course of a criminal tax prosecution brought by the United States against three defendants, William and Beverly Wunsch and their daughter, Teri Sowers. Shortly after Sowers’s arrest by federal agents on March 18, 1993, Frank Swan telephoned Assistant United States Attorney Elana Artson, counsel for the United States. Swan identified himself as Sowers’s lawyer and asked about the charges pending against his client, including the conditions for her release. Swan also told Artson that he would be unable to attend Sowers’s bail hearing that afternoon, but would send another attorney, Gerald Wilson, in his stead.

On March 24, 1993, Artson moved to disqualify Swan and Wilson from representing Sowers, arguing that their representation of both Sowers and her parents, who at that time were the targets of a grand jury…

concurring in part, dissenting in part:

I concur in Parts I & II of the opinion. I disagree with Part III. Since § 6068(f) does not apply to Swan’s conduct, there is no reason to decide whether § 6068(f) is void for vagueness.

“The void for vagueness doctrine is concerned with a defendant’s right to fair notice and adequate warning that his conduct runs afoul of the law.” Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030, 1077-78 , 111 S.Ct. 2720, 2746 , 115 L.Ed.2d 888 (1991). Section 6068(f) states: “Lawyers are required to abstain from all offensive personality, and to advance no fact prejudicial to the honor or reputation of a party or witness, unless required by the justice of the cause with which he or she is charged.” The prohibition against “offensive personality” should be read as limited to conduct that affects the administration of justice. Since Swan’s conduct did not affect the administration of justice, it is not covered by § 6068. We should “avoid constitutional issues when resolution of such issues is not necessary for disposition of the case.” In Re Snyder, 472 U.S. 634, 642 , 105 S.Ct. 2874, 2880 , 86 L.Ed.2d 504 (1985). If we hold that § 6068(f) does not *1121…