Update: Late Thursday afternoon, Judge Johnson issued an order denying Burr & Forman's motion for reconsideration. She did, however, extend the deadline for Victor Hayslip's letter of apology until Dec. 12 "in order to allow Mr. Hayslip the opportunity to return from Canada and his dog sledding excursion." What do you do when a federal judge orders you to write a letter admitting to misconduct you don't believe you've committed?

That's the quandary faced by Victor Hayslip of Burr & Forman, who is supposed to file a letter of apology for "inappropriate and unprofessional" conduct with U.S. District Judge Inge Johnson of Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday afternoon. I told you earlier this week about all of the circumstances that led to Johnson's order, but to recap briefly: Hayslip represents individual defendants in a securities class action against Regions Financial. In November, he sent a letter to U.S. District Judge William Duffey of Atlanta, who is overseeing a securities class action against SunTrust Banks. Duffey has scheduled a Dec. 18 hearing on allegations that the plaintiffs' firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd misrepresented information obtained from a confidential informant in its SunTrust complaint; Hayslip's letter asked Duffey to keep the SunTrust hearing open to the public since there have been similar allegations against the plaintiffs' firm in the Regions class action.

Johnson, who's overseeing the Regions case, took grave offense to Hayslip's letter. She concluded that he -- and not Robbins Geller -- had misrepresented facts and behaved unethically. On Tuesday, she ordered the Burr & Forman lawyer to admit his misconduct and apologize to Duffey and to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering an appeal of her certification of the Regions shareholder class.

But Hayslip -- who is on vacation in Canada and wasn't available to give his side of the story to Johnson at a status conference on Monday -- doesn't think he did anything wrong when he sent the letter to Duffey, according to a motion for reconsideration that his firm filed late Wednesday before Johnson. In fact, according to the Burr & Forman motion, Hayslip is ethically barred from admitting misconduct he does not believe he engaged in.

"For Mr. Hayslip to admit he mislead Judge Duffey or the Eleventh Circuit would be a violation of the rules of professional conduct, and could potentially subject him to disciplinary action, including disbarment," the Burr & Forman motion said. "Mr. Hayslip has grave concerns because he feels he cannot in good conscience write a letter admitting or asserting that he made such misrepresentations, when in good faith he does not believe that he did so." The motion argues that Johnson may have misunderstood Hayslip's motive for writing to Judge Duffey; he merely wanted to urge the judge to keep the Robbins Geller hearing open to the public and, according to the motion, did not intend to influence the outcome of the hearing in Atlanta or to impugn the character of Robbins Geller's lead lawyer in both the Regions and SunTrust cases, Andrew Brown. The Burr & Forman motion asked Johnson to give Hayslip an opportunity to appear in person to explain himself.

In a response filed Wednesday night, Robbins Geller avoided discussion of Hayslip's ethical dilemma, arguing instead that he has never offered a substantive explanation for why he disclosed sealed deposition testimony from the Regions case in his letter to Duffey -- and why he didn't tell Duffey that, in the Regions case, Johnson did not credit defense assertions that the plaintiffs had improperly used evidence from confidential witnesses. If Hayslip had really wanted to defend himself, Robbins Geller said, he should have returned from vacation to appear before the judge at the status conference on Monday.

Johnson's order was issued at 4:40 on Tuesday afternoon, and it gave Hayslip 48 hours to file a draft of his apology letter. As of Thursday morning, Hayslip had not submitted the draft letter but did reply to Robbins Geller's latest filing, once again asking for a chance to appear personally before Johnson and requesting a stay until he's defended himself. The whole mess is now in the judge's hands.

(Reporting by Alison Frankel)

Follow us on Twitter @AlisonFrankel, @ReutersLegal  | Like us on Facebook