Former Boulder City Councilman Travis Chandler was barred from practicing law in Nevada after committing several offenses, according to the Nevada Supreme Court.
The State Bar filed a complaint against Chandler in 2012 after a 2007 incident where Chandler failed to contact one of his clients about a patent application. According to court records, Russell Keller hired Chandler in 2007 to file a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Throughout the next two years, Keller asked Chandler about the progress of the patent application, to which Chandler told him that “patents take time,” according to the Supreme Court document. In 2011, the trademark office told Keller that a letter of abandonment for his application had been sent to Chandler.
The court document said Chandler never told Keller about the abandonment, and Keller had never consented to it.
After he received the letter from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Keller made numerous attempts to contact Chandler, but Chandler did not respond or take any action on Keller’s behalf, the document said.
Keller filed a grievance against Chandler shortly after.
According to the court document, Chandler also failed to respond to the State Bar’s attempts to contact him about a previous discipline he was facing.
In 2013, a hearing panel discovered that Chandler had two prior disciplinary sanctions, and added that in December 2011 he was excluded from practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a similar misconduct.
The panel also determined that Chandler had a dishonest or selfish motive, a pattern of misconduct, refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of his conduct, and vulnerability of his victim.
Aside from his disbarment, Chandler was ordered to pay Keller $4,800 in restitution.
Chandler served as a Boulder City councilman from 2007-11.
He couldn’t be reached for comment.
Contact reporter Steven Slivka at sslivka@bouldercityreview.com or at 702-586-9401. Follow @StevenSlivka on Twitter.