Milwaukee lawyer faces 6-month suspension

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A Milwaukee attorney who didn’t pay his storage locker fee, which resulted in closed case filings to be publicly disclosed, is facing a six-month suspension, according to a complaint.

Phillip Ramthun faces 21 counts of misconduct in a complaint filed by the Office of Lawyer Regulation on Oct. 22. Many have to do with his handling of client cases, as he allegedly did not keep money in trust accounts, filed court papers late and did not monitor pending cases.

However, Ramthun also fell behind on payments of a storage locker he held in West Allis. Inside the storage facility were 400 boxes of old case files, which had confidential client information, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, the storage facility sent him notices that his locker would be auctioned off if he did not pay his bills, which was $748 as of December 2012.

He did not pay it, and in January 2013 a public sale was held on the facility. There were no interested buyers, though, and the storage facility gave him more time to remove the files. Eventually, he paid his outstanding ledger to the facility, which totaled $1,790.

During the investigation, Ramthun did not cooperate with the OLR, and the state Supreme Court suspended his law license in April. It was reinstated in June.

Ramthun graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1978. He did not return a message left at his office Monday.

In addition to the storage facility, Ramthun, according to the complaint, also allegedly mishandled several cases where he was hired to file suit. In one of the cases, where he was representing a woman who was suing her former employer for disability benefits, Ramthun did not file the lawsuit before the statute of limitations expired, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit was filed, though, and it was subsequently dismissed for being time-barred. During the case, though, Ramthun did not respond to a motion to dismiss filed by the defendants and did not check up on the case, according to the complaint.

Once his client hired a new attorney, he did not send the file the new counsel, according to the complaint.

In another case, he filed a lawsuit over a client who slipped and fell at a business, but then did not have a process server attempt to serve the lawsuit until a month after it had been filed. The suit was not served, though, and the case was dismissed as a result. He also allowed his client trust account to fall below the required amount needed for a check that went to an insurance company and did not keep an individual client ledger, according to the complaint.

Finally, after he hired a process server to serve a lawsuit, he did not pay them, and had his law clerk tell the company several times that a check would be cut, when in fact it never was, according to the complaint.

If the court suspends his license for six months, Ramthun would have to petition to have it reinstated. Follow @eheisigWLJ