Pacia

Richard A. Pacia, who abruptly resigned as president of the state bar association a week ago, has a number of lawsuits against him that either accuse him of legal malpractice or of failure to repay loans.

He is awash in debt. There are federal tax liens on his house in North Providence, and some of the investment properties he bought with borrowed money have been foreclosed on.

The North Providence tax collector, Claudette Mooney, says Pacia has been delinquent since 2005 in paying the property taxes on his house though “he has paid and is paying interest on the principal balance.”

A Jamestown couple, now in their late 70s, from whom he borrowed more than $70,000 has put a lien on his residence.

Pacia, 56, continues to practice law and as recently as this week was representing a client in a real estate closing, according to a secretary who answered the phone at his law office. And newspaper advertisements show that in recent months, he has represented mortgage holders in foreclosure proceedings against property owners.

In resigning his bar association presidency –– more than three months before his one-year term was to expire –– Pacia revealed little about his motivation. A statement released by the bar association, which has 5,976 members, said he was bowing out for “personal and professional reasons that require his full-time attention.”

Pacia did not return phone calls left at his Pawtucket law office this week. J. Renn Olenn, a lawyer who is representing him in two of the lawsuits that have been brought against him, said Pacia would have no further comment and that he had advised Pacia not to talk. “It’s not appropriate to discuss pending litigation,” Olenn said.

But a search of court filings, land evidence, mortgage and tax records as well as information gleaned from interviews offers a window into the legal and financial problems that have beset Pacia in recent years.

A major part of his problems seem to center on the collapse of the real estate market in Rhode Island and plummeting property values.

Public records show that over the last several years, Pacia, individually and as a principal in limited liability corporations, bought several pieces of property in Rhode Island with borrowed money. Some of the loans were from private individuals.

One such lender, Rosemarie Ciccone, 75, of Jamestown, says she and her husband, Orlando, are former longtime clients of Pacia and that they charged him above-market rates for the loans. In an interview this week, she said that Pacia was in the business of buying up “distressed properties,” fixing them up and then reselling them. “He’d come to us for a loan because the money was right there. There was no waiting period like with a bank…” When the real estate market was hot, she said, things were good, but the last couple of times “it was not lily white.”

Ciccone and her husband, who is 77 and uses a wheelchair, she says, now have a lien on Pacia’s house on High Service Avenue, North Providence, for more than $77,000. The lien was filed after the Ciccones got a default judgment against Pacia last October in Superior Court –– about a year and a half after Pacia was supposed to pay off a one-year loan from them, with 12 percent interest. The Ciccones –– who for 31 years owned a catering business before they went into the real estate investment and private loan business –– made the loan to Pacia in May 2006. They filed their lawsuit against him just a few weeks before he became president of the bar.

“We trusted him,” she says, with a tone of resignation. “My husband found him to be honest, sincere, trustworthy. But over the years, that has changed. He hasn’t been making any payments. He hasn’t paid us back.”

Another lawsuit brought against Pacia in Kent County Superior Court by Webster Bank –– filed the same month as the Ciccone suit –– alleges that Pacia defaulted on a business line of credit the bank gave him. The bank is demanding about $20,000.

Yet another lawsuit, in Providence Superior Court, filed just last month against Pacia and attorney Thomas A. Grasso –– who used to share office space with Pacia –– accuses the two of malpractice in connection with a refinancing for a single-family house that Pacia owned in the Eden Park section of Cranston –– which has since been foreclosed on.

The lawsuit was filed by Mortgage Guarantee & Title Company, a real estate title insurance company. Pacia and Grasso were authorized agents for the firm. The suit alleges that Pacia asked Grasso, “as a personal favor,” to act as the closing attorney on the refinancing. Pacia had a prior mortgage for $231,264 on the property that was supposed to be paid off with the refinancing. Papers executed at the closing indicated that the mortgage had been paid off in full. But that was not true, the lawsuit alleges. According to the lawsuit, two checks issued by Grasso on behalf of Pacia bounced and when it came to paying off the first mortgage, there was a shortfall of $9,751.30.

Despite the shortfall, the lawsuit says, Pacia and Grasso issued a Mortgage Guarantee title policy to the refinancing bank indicating that it was in first position if there was a default on the loan.

When Pacia defaulted on the loan and the property was foreclosed, Mortgage Guarantee ended up having to pay $11,708.13 (including interest accrued) that Pacia still owed on the original loan so that clear title could be given to a new property owner, the court papers say.

Pacia, the lawsuit says, “made various agreements to pay the balance … in installments but failed to honor his agreements.”

Asked for comment yesterday, Grasso told The Providence Journal that he was a longtime friend of Pacia and had handled the closing “as the last step in the process.” He said he never did a title search on the property because he’d assumed Pacia had. “I don’t want to bag him,” Grasso said, but he said whatever had happened was not his fault. He said he’d relied on Pacia to make sure there was clear title on the property. When he found out about the shortfall, he said, he spoke to Pacia “and he told me, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll pay it,’ and he never paid it.”

Two other lawsuits filed against Pacia last year accuse him of malpractice in connection with real estate work he performed as a lawyer. He has answered one of the complaints to date, denies the allegations and claims to have acted in good faith.

According to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, Pacia remains a member of the bar in good standing. Pacia received the bar association’s Pro Bono Publico award in 1994 for volunteer service and its continuing service award in 2003.

tbreton@projo.com