The Houston [1st] Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court judgment disbarring a Houston-area attorney for a long list of disciplinary violations.
Diogu Kalu Diogu, II v. Commission for Lawyer Discipline (No. 01-24-00303-CV; April 30, 2026) arose from a 2021 disbarment proceeding. The Commission alleged that Diogu had violated several provisions of the Texas Disciplinary Rules in two separate lawsuits. The first involved a case Diogu filed in Fort Bend County against several defendants, who moved to dismiss under the TCPA and sought attorney’s fees and sanctions against him. During that litigation, the Commission alleged, Diogu misrepresented his sanctions record in matters relating to the TCPA, misrepresented that he couldn’t pay court costs in an attempt to proceed in forma pauperis in his appeal to the 14th CA, and filed a bad faith motion to disqualify the trial judge and administrative judge in the litigation. The other case, filed in federal court on behalf of an infusion center against Aetna, involved Diogu’s misrepresentation of a contingency fee agreement as having been signed by his client.
In 2024, after Diogu dragged the trial court and administrative judges into recusal disputes and deploying other questionable tactics seeking to delay the trial, the trial court held a jury trial (at which Diogu didn’t appear) at the conclusion of which the jury found that Diogu had committed a raft of violations, including making material misrepresentations to the tribunal and knowingly offering false evidence. The trial court signed a default judgment of disbarment. Diogu’s motion to set aside the judgment was denied by operation of law. Diogu then tried to remove his case to fedeeral court, which dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Diogu appealed.
In an opinion by Justice Guiney, the court of appeals affirmed. Diogu’s issues boiled down to the sufficiency of the evidence of his professional misconduct. At the outset, the court noted that Diogu did not file in the appellate court the reporter’s record from the jury trial, precluding the court from assessing his factual and legal sufficiency claims. The court thus had to presume that the trial court’s judgment was supported by sufficient evidence. Diogu next argued that the TCPA provided him “an absolute privilege for statements made in judicial decisions.” Unfortunately, the TCPA expressly excludes disciplinary actions or proceedings brought under Chapter 81, Government Code, or the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure. Might read the statute next time.
Turning to Diogu’s extensive and repetitive efforts to recuse the judges, the court rejected his argument that the trial judge violated TRCP Rule 18a by conducting the trial before a second administrative judge had ruled on his recusal motion. But, as the court observed, the first administrative judge, Judge Brown, had already denied it, allowing the trial judge to proceed with the case. The court pointed to its prior decision in another case in which Diogu sought to recuse a trial judge, in which he argued that the trial court erred in proceeding with the trial and should have stayed the proceeding because his motion for reconsideration was still pending. In that case, the court concluded that nothing in Rule 18a barred a trial court from proceeding with an ongoing trial while such a motion was pending. The same was true here.
Diogu next contended that Texas Rule of Disciplinary Procedure 3.07 required trial to be held no later than 180 days after the date his answer was filed. Here the trial was held nearly three years from the date of his answer. But once more, Diogu failed to read the rules, which state that the time period in Rule 3.07 is “directory only and the failure to comply [] does not result in the invalidation of an act or event by reason of the noncompliance with [the time limit].” He then pivoted to an argument that the alleged violations didn’t rise to the level of disbarment. [Seriously?] Unfortunately, since Diogu didn’t file the reporter’s record, the court couldn’t review “the evidence and arguments presented, and the factors the trial court considered, in support of the trial court’s sanction determination.”
Finally, Diogu argued that the trial court erred in not granting his motion to set aside the default judgment and grant him a new trial. He averred that since his recusal motion to disqualify Judge Brown hadn’t been ruled on, the trial court wouldn’t proceed with the scheduled jury trial he knew about and twice unsuccessfully tried to continue. Applying the Craddock factors, the court was not persuaded that the trial court erred in finding that Diogu’s explanation for ghosting the jury trial was not an indication of “conscious indifference.” No abuse of discretion there. The court affirmed, leaving the state with one fewer lawyer.
