Buying Into License Revocation

In a case involving misconduct of “epic proportions,” a unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court imposed the sanction of license revocation.

The case involved an attorney who purchased a law practice in 1999. He had previously been a shareholder in the practice and was aware that the seller attorney had a (to put it charitably) non-compliant trust situation:

Attorney Weigel stated that before he bought out Alvin Eisenberg,he understood the trust account was running a deficit but he claimed he did notknow the full extent of the deficit.  Inhis testimony at the hearing, Attorney Weigel said that when he and hispartners bought Alvin Eisenberg out, “I would have believed the problem tobe closer in the $200,000, $250,000 range. After we bought him out and some other things started to come to light,it was obvious that we were closer to the million dollar range than the$250,000 range.”  When asked howlong after the March 1999 buyout Attorney Weigel came to the conclusion thatthe trust account was running closer to a million dollar deficit, he estimated”somewhere over the course of six months or so,” which would havemeant late 1999 or early 2000.  Whenasked whether he gave any thought to reporting Alvin Eisenberg to the relevantauthorities and walking away, Attorney Weigel responded, “I thought of itbut just made a moral decision not to do that.”

Rather than bring the practice into compliance, the attorney engaged in a thirteen year practice of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” by paying trust funds owed to clients and providers on a “squeakiest wheel” basis.

As to sanction:

A six- or seven-figure deficit in an account that holds clientfunds is an ethical failure of epic proportions.  We agree with the OLR that it would bedifficult to imagine a more aggravated pattern of misconduct than the onepresented here.  We agree with the OLRthat any sanction less than revocation would undermine the public’s confidencein the honesty and integrity of the bar.

(Mike Frisch)