CINCINNATI — The Ohio Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended a Cincinnati lawyer from practicing after a complaint filed against him in December went unanswered for months, according to documents in the case.
Kenneth Grant Hawley has been practicing law since 1979 and has been involved in many Cincinnati cases over the years — including defending former Cincinnati Veterans Affairs chief Dr. Barbara Temeck, who died in 2021. Temeck was removed from her position at the VA after dozens of whistleblowers objected to her management practices in the first of a series of reports by WCPO and the Scripps News Washington Bureau.
Hawley was a civil, personal injury and employment attorney who also often defended Cincinnatians in their legal battles against evictions or problem landlords.
According to the complaint filed against Hawley, multiple clients who'd hired him to represent them in civil cases could not get in contact with him — sometimes for up to a year — during the course of the case.
One client who hired him to represent her against a landlord she claimed allowed mold in her apartment and other unfit living conditions did not speak with him for a year, during which Hawley missed discovery deadlines and filed dismissals for the case without his clients knowledge. That case was dismissed and refiled three different times, all without the client's knowledge, according to the complaint.
Another client said she hired Hawley to represent her after her husband's employer refused to pay out benefits following his death. After a year of no communication from Hawley, however, that client filed a malpractice lawsuit against him. Hawley never responded to that lawsuit, nor did he ever appear in court for any hearings in the case; a judge ultimately granted the client $110,000 in damages, though Hawley never responded to the judgment.
A third client claims Hawley missed due dates in her lawsuit claiming employment discrimination. That case was also dismissed because of a lack of response from Hawley and missed deadlines, the complaint says.
In addition to those cases, the complaint also alleges Hawley did not maintain professional liability insurance while he was representing his clients, nor did he tell them he did not carry that insurance.
But that complaint isn't the reason the Ohio State Supreme Court ordered Hawley's license to practice law be suspended indefinitely.
The court initially imposed an interim suspension after Hawley failed to respond to the complaint filed against him. The complaint, filed in December of last year, went unanswered for roughly two months before that penalty was imposed.
More months went by, and Hawley never acknowledged the complaint filed against him, or the Ohio Supreme Court's decision to impose an interim suspension.
Ultimately, on June 30, the court ruled to indefinitely suspend Hawley's license to practice law, court records show.
