TALLAHASSEE — Christopher Lee Buttermore, an attorney registered in Coral Springs, has been suspended from practice by the Florida Supreme Court.
The court order was issued in the wake of the attorney’s alleged inability to provide adequate legal services in one client matter and for allegedly making misrepresentations in a sworn testimony in another. The attorney also failed to respond to Florida Bar inquiries in the matters, according to the bar's website.
The Supreme Court released a consent judgment in the matter detailing the facts of the attorney’s alleged misconduct. In the first count, Buttermore was hired in early August 2011 to help settle his clients' credit card debt. The clients signed an agreement to pay over $16,000 in monthly installments, later reduced to $15,780.54 to be paid in 20 monthly installments. The clients began receiving phone calls from their creditors again in 2015, at which point they discovered that the attorney had not settled the issue despite having accepted the fees, according to court records.
In the second count, Buttermore had attended an arbitration hearing about a complaint made by another client. The consent judgment states that the attorney admitted he had made misrepresented the fees collected from the client during his initial testimony.
After the attorney submitted a conditional guilty plea, Buttermore was ordered to be suspended for six months and to pay restitution in the amount of $16,169.80 to one client. He will also need to pay court costs.
Buttermore is a graduate of the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in December 1988 and was previously suspended Jan. 1, 2015, and March 18, 2016. He incurred another suspension on May 17, according to the Florida Bar.