Glendale attorney suspended for 60 days

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has suspended the license of a Glendale attorney for 60 days over three counts of misconduct.

Friday’s discipline stems from an Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint filed Jan. 14, 2014, against Stuart Roitburd. The OLR alleged Roitburd failed to repay $43,369.74 owed to his mother’s estate.

Roitburd was appointed the personal representative of his mother’s estate after she died in 2006. When a court ordered him in 2011 to pay creditors of the estate, he claimed he needed to fix accounting errors but then failed to appear at hearing on the matter, according to the complaint. Roitburd was taken into custody in 2012 and released five days later.

Although the court ordered him to pay money back to the estate, he had not done so, according to the OLR. He also failed cooperate with the OLR’s investigation of the matter, resulting in a temporary license suspension in May 2014.

The OLR, as well as court-appointed referee, sought a two-year suspension of Roitburd’s license and asked that the court order Roitburd to pay back the estate. Roitburd failed to respond to the complaint and appear at the disciplinary hearings, according to the OLR.

The Supreme Court on Friday disagreed with the suggestions from the OLR and referee, instead suspending Roitburd’s license for a shorter term of 60 days.

According to the per curiam decision, that term was excessive because it was the first time in about 30 years that Roitburd had been disciplined, there was no pattern of indifference to attorney ethical rules and because the court does not know about his work as a personal representative of the estate and the state itself.

“For example, while we know that certain assets went unaccounted for, we do not know whether any mistakes Attorney Roitburd made in the administration of the estate rose to the level of dishonesty or bad faith,” according to the decision.

The court noted that other attorneys had been disciplined for less time in cases involving misconduct similar to Roitburd’s.

The high court also declined to grant a request that Roitburd be ordered to pay restitution to mother’s estate because the OLR and referee did not explain why the court should duplicate a circuit court order. Instead, the court required Roitburd to pay back the estate as a condition of reinstatement.

Roitburd graduated from Marquette University Law School in 1984. According to the State Bar website, he has failed to pay dues and report completing continuing education requirements.

Justices Shirley Abrahamson dissented in part and concurred in part, disagreeing with the length of the discipline imposed on Roitburd because there was no justification in doing so, she argued. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley joined in Abrahmson’s dissent in part and concurrence in part.

“Problematically, the per curiam appears to give Attorney Roitburd the benefit of the doubts created by his own non-participation,” Abrahamson wrote.

The two justices also disagreed with the decision to withhold Justice David Prosser’s separate writing from the per curiam opinion without explaining why the separate writing would appear later. Abrahmanson wrote that the four other justice were improperly interpreting internal operating procedures for preparing high court opinions to include per curiam decisions.

Prosser’s writing, wrote Abrahamson, referenced a pending OLR case that raised similar issues. Therefore, according to internal procedures, she argued, Friday’s per curiam decision should have been released at the same time as the decision in the other OLR case.

The rules, she wrote, are different for majority opinions assigned to a justice as opposed to an OLR disciplinary per curiam, which is assigned to and written by a Supreme Court commissioner, then modified and approved by the justices.

“Several justices have become so enamored with the ‘separate writing to follow’ notation that they have threatened its use in situations that have no relationship to (the rules for separate writings in justice-authored opinions),” Abrahamson wrote. Follow @erikastrebel