Who remembers Ed Burwell, attorney at law? Here’s a refresher: Nikki Araguz married  Captain Thomas Araguz, a fire fighter, lived in Wharton, TX, with Thomas’ two sons from a prior marriage. On July 3, 2010, Captain Araguz answered the call to fight a fire at an egg plant in Boling, Texas and went missing for several hours and was found to have perished in the fire. The morning after Thomas’ burial, Nikki learned that two separate lawsuits had been filed by his family in an attempt to take away her benefits as a firefighter’s spouse, though Thomas had specifically named her as beneficiary in one instance by having the marriage declared a her marriage to Thomas a “same-sex marriage” thus void under Texas law.

[box type=”info”] Nikki Araguz Justice Fail[/box]

The ex-wife hired two ethically challenged lawyers, Frank Mann and Edward Burwell. Burwell made it a point to sensationalize the case against Nikki early on and practically never passed up a chance to refer Nikki’s marriage as being a same-sex. Burwell and Mann worked day and night to ensure that Nikki would be declared a man and have her marriage voided. Burwell and Mann did a superb job of playing every transphobic, anti-HIV muck-raking angle in the media.

Burwell and Mann quickly buried the actual legal issue under stories about how evil Nikki was. Then it was all about Nikki eating kittens for breakfast instead of dealing with the fact that Nikki had Texas Legislative law on her side and US 14 amendment Constitutional law on her side because her original certificate of live birth from California asserts that she was born female. Burwell and Mann did a fine job of making it impossible for a small-town Republican judge up for re-election to side with Nikki. Nikki lost her case, she was declared a man, her marriage was declared a same-sex-marriage and was voided and the case is now appealing the verdict to the 13th Circuit Court of Appeals (a Democratic court).

So, here’s where the schadenfreude comes in…

Ed Burwell (who had a number of ethics violations on his record as an attorney to begin with) just received more probation for another ethic violation. On top of this violation, he has yet another case pending against him in Harris County which may very will cause him to lose his license. This will make 3 fairly major ethics violations plus a public rebuke for passing hot checks.

So, just to be sure, I called the State Bar. Here’s the conversation: