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Referee walks back recommendation for lawyer to pay back heirs

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//October 27, 2017//

Referee walks back recommendation for lawyer to pay back heirs

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//October 27, 2017//

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The parties in a lawyer-discipline case will have a chance to persuade a referee over whether a Walworth County lawyer should have to pay back the heirs of a client.

Lawyer-regulators charged Linda Gray of Oleniczak & Gray in June with one count of misconduct for drafting a will for a client in 2013 and making herself the sole beneficiary even though the client had two siblings, three nieces and a nephew. When the woman died in 2015, Gray received $298,742.12.

In September, the agency and Gray reached a stipulation in which Gray pleaded no contest to the count of misconduct and admitted to the facts in the complaint. They also agreed to the license suspension that the OLR had sought.

The referee in the case, Jonathan Goodman, in a report filed on Oct. 4, accepted the stipulation and recommended that Gray pay the full cost of the proceeding. However, in addition to the 60-day suspension, Goodman recommended that Gray reimburse the woman’s heirs the $298,742.12 she had received.

Shortly after filing the report, Gray and the OLR told Goodman on Oct. 13, during a telephone conference, that they had not thought he would issue a recommendation on restitution to the heirs.

Gray asked that the referee attempt to withdraw the recommendation and have an evidentiary hearing on the matter. Goodman agreed and filed a letter last week asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to rescind the recommendation and order that the matter be sent back for a hearing.

The high court issued an order on Oct. 19 saying it would not take action on Goodman’s report from Oct. 4 and would consider the matter after Goodman had filed a supplemental report on both the suspension and the restitution matters. The court gave Goodman 90 days to file the report.

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