Politics

Bar again sanctions Edney, six-term county commissioner, for ethics violations

By Bill Moss, Published: July 1, 2026

Hendersonville attorney J. Michael Edney, a six-term Henderson County commissioner, has agreed to a consent order of discipline by the North Carolina Bar after the regulators’ investigation found that he misused trust accounts, made improper disbursements and committed other violations of the legal profession’s ethics code.

The case resulting in the disciplinary order is the fourth time Edney has been sanctioned by the North Carolina Bar. He avoided a four-year suspension of his law license, a panel of the Bar’s Disciplinary Hearing Commission said, because he admitted wrongdoing, agreed to supervision of his law practice during the stayed suspension and reported that he was seeking counseling to work through personal issues with his family life.

Audit finds misuse of trust funds

Edney was subject to a random audit in February 2022, a period when he was maintaining two general trust accounts and three dedicated fiduciary accounts. Among the findings of the audit were that Edney:

• Failed to conduct monthly and quarterly reconciliations, comparing office records with bank statements; create and maintain reports and review random sampling transactions.
• Failed to provide to clients an annual accounting of receipts and disbursements of the trust funds.
• Disbursed more money “from the trust fund for a client than were in the trust fund.” Improper disbursements in excess of the trust fund account balances were for $7,271 in 2007, $700 in November 2013 and $100 in December 2018, the Bar said.

Based on its random audit, the bar opened grievance 22G0200 in February 2022. The Bar’s consent order described several other violations of Bar procedures and the Rules of Professional Conduct:

• Investigators found that Edney made a disbursement of $9,680.42 in October 2017 to client WCI, depleting the trust account. The disbursement “misused other entrusted funds in the TD Bank trust account for the benefit of the client in the 2017 WCI matter.” Edney did not “cure” the deficit until March 2023.
• In June 2022, $51,849.23 was disbursed from a TD Bank trust account after the bank “failed to honor a Stop-Payment order from Edney.” The payment “misused other entrusted funds in the TD Bank trust account for the benefit of the client in the 2021 Select Bank matter.” Edney “cured” the deficit in April 2023.
• In 2022, Edney disbursed $131,737.32 from a trust fund in the Wright-Patton case, a payment that the Bar again described as improper and a misuse of other entrusted funds. Edney cured the deficit in March 2023.
• T. Elliott, a defendant in a civil case, retained Edney for $5,000 to seek a dismissal of a lawsuit because the plaintiff had let her attorney go and “seemed to not be pursuing the lawsuit.” After the client and lawyer disagreed on what action to take, Elliott asked Edney for an accounting of charges against the $5,000 retainer. After a month of calls and emails to Edney resulted in no response, Elliott sent an email firing Edney as his attorney and asked for a final invoice. He received neither a refund nor an invoice.
• In an order in April 2024 resulting from another disciplinary case, a Wake County Superior Court judge barred Edney from serving in any fiduciary role, including as a trustee. Yet, the next month, the Bar said, Edney did just that, acting as a trustee for the estate of an elderly woman in poor health, Ethel Jane Brock. One Mrs. Brock’s three sons asked Edney to draft a deed that would transfer a piece of real property from the mother to the son, D. Brock, through a power-of-attorney. A trust deed and a POA deed, prepared the week before Mrs. Brock’s death, were signed the day before her death and recorded the day she died. The son’s action with Edney’s help meant that the piece of land was taken from the overall estate upon Mrs. Brock’s death and also that its value was not available to offset any debts the estate owed, the Bar said. A lawyer working as estate administrator determined that the POA transfer “exceeded the authority” of the POA terms and voided the transfer, restoring the parcel to the estate so it was available to all the heirs.
• In February 2020, Edney charged criminal defendant A. Brigman a $15,000 flat fee to represent him. When Brigman couldn’t pay, Edney drew up a deed to convey to himself land Brigman owned in Rutherford County — valued at $19,700 in 2020 and $24,000 in 2024. The arrangement violated the bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct, the Bar complaint said, because it potentially conveyed to Edney property with greater value than his fee. The arrangement favored Edney “who owns the property and decides whether and when to convey it back,” and failed to get the client’s signed informed consent to the terms of the transaction.

Failure to timely respond

The bar also said Edney failed to respond to its inquiries and requests for documents, missing in deadlines in March, April, August and December 2022, and in early 2023, nor did he comply when the Bar subpoenaed him to appear at the State Bar offices on Feb. 27, 2023 and produce documents.

Continued requests and entreaties by the state bar and “an elected councilor of the North Carolina State Bar Council in late 2023 and 2024” produced no response from Edney.

Edney’s failure to comply with record-keeping, review and reconciliation required in the rules of professional conduct “caused significant harm to clients for whom he should have been maintaining funds in trust,” the Bar order said.

In previous disciplinary actions by the Bar, Edney was:

• Reprimanded in 1997 for taking a fee from an indigent client and failing to file an appeal.
• Suspended for two years (with a stay request available after six months) in 1999 for failing to respond to two grievances and failing to take part in a mandatory fee dispute resolution program.
• Reprimanded in 2017 for neglecting an estate case, failing to communicate with a client for two years and failing to deposit money he received from the decedent’s family into a trust account.

The new, stayed suspension differs from the 1999 case, the Bar said, because of mitigating factors arising from personal challenges, because with assistance of counsel he has formed a detailed and mandated plan to comply with the consent order, agreed to a four-year monitoring program, “as well as the fact that Edney has acknowledged all wrongdoing alleged … has fully cooperated with disciplinary proceeding, is remorseful and has made efforts to come into compliance with the Rules.”

Edney told the hearing panel about serious medical issues his family has experienced, including his 14-year-old daughter’s heart transplant in 2018; his son’s ruptured appendix a year later, when he was a freshman in college; and his wife’s emergency surgery for a medical problem in November 2020. Edney “proactively sought treatment” from a psychiatrist in 2022 and a therapist in early 2025 and has continued seeing both, the Bar said.

The order imposing the stayed suspension sets out 44 conditions Edney must abide by involving bookkeeping, trust account reconciliation, regular reporting to the Bar and cooperation with a practice monitor.