High court to decide on discipline for two attorneys

Listen to this article

The Wisconsin Supreme Court plans to release decisions this week in two lawyer-discipline cases.

The justices will decide Thursday whether to impose discipline on both Carl Schwedler and Matthew Schwitzer.

Schwedler, a California attorney, has already been banned from practicing in at least two other jurisdictions. The Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a complaint against him last year, alleging he had failed to notify the agency that he had been sanctioned by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office for various violations of the office’s rules, including accepting advanced fees for a patent but never working on it and refusing to refund the money to the client. The California state bar also disbarred him last year.

The OLR is asking the justices to suspend Schwedler’s law license for six months and order him to pay $1,500 in restitution to the client.

The justices will also issue a decision on Thursday in the case of the Green Bay attorney Matthew Schwitzer.

The OLR filed a complaint against Schwitzer in 2015, alleging, among other things, that he had advertised that he was admitted to practice law in Wisconsin although his license had been suspended; that he had tried to transfer money out of a trust account while he was in jail; and that he had failed to cooperate with an OLR investigation.

The OLR had asked that Schwitzer’s license be suspended for six months. A court-appointed referee agreed, using a report filed in January to recommend the disciplinary action. Follow @erikastrebel