Reinstated At A Discount Rate

An attorney who was suspended in the wake of a money laundering conviction was reinstated by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and ordered to pay half of the costs of the proceeding.

In July 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed Attorney Stern’s conviction on the ground that the trial court wrongly prevented him from testifying about his own conduct.

  The court noted that the reversal did not exonerate the attorney. He had already served his time and was not re-prosecuted as he pleaded guilty to contempt of court.

The focus was on the payment of costs

Given that it was appropriate for this court to assess the full costs of a reinstatement proceeding against a lawyer who was fully exonerated of all charges that led to the revocation of his law license, it would seem incongruous to assess no costs against Attorney Stern, who was not fully exonerated; as stated above, he stands guilty, by his own plea, of criminal contempt of court.

On the other hand, the OLR does not make a particularly compelling case against the referee’s recommendation to waive the costs of this proceeding. While this court’s general policy is to award full costs to the OLR, see SCR 22.24(1m), we have certainly made exceptions to this policy. The OLR, in arguing that no such exception should be made here, seems to refer to an outdated standard: whether “extraordinary circumstances” justify a deviation from the court’s general policy to award the OLR full costs. We removed the “extraordinary circumstances” language from our rule governing the assessment of costs (SCR 22.24) some time ago. See S. Ct. Order 05-01B, 2011 WI 59 (iss. Jul. 6, 2011; eff. Jan. 1, 2012).

On balance, we deem it appropriate to impose one-half of the costs on Attorney Stern…

 (Mike Frisch)