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Thomas L. Frenn

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//May 25, 2009//

Thomas L. Frenn

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//May 25, 2009//

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A Chinese proverb says, “If you give a man a fish you’ve fed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you’ve fed him for life.”

If that’s true, attorney Thomas L. Frenn’s efforts are helping sustain many nonprofits directly and indirectly. Not only has he donated innumerable hours to nonprofit organizations in the Milwaukee area, but he also has taught countless other attorneys how to assist nonprofits.

Frenn, a past chair and longtime member of the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Business Law Section, served as the inaugural chair of its Nonprofit Organizations Committee, which organized and wrote “A Guide for Wisconsin Non-Profit Organizations.” Frenn additionally chaired the editorial board of the “Business Advisor Series,” a nine-volume series published by the State Bar CLE Books Department and the Business Law Section.

“I’ve tried to help educate lawyers so they’re able to help people — their clients and nonprofits — which is what I think the purpose of being a lawyer is,” says Frenn, a shareholder with Petrie & Stocking S.C. in Milwaukee.

The Nonprofit Organizations Committee also wrote and lobbied for the passage of Ch. 181, the Nonstock Corporations Act, and created the section’s Nonprofit Assistance Program, largely under Frenn’s direction. That program ultimately became the Milwaukee Legal Initiative for Nonprofit Corporations, a clinical program at Marquette University Law School.

As for direct help to nonprofits, Frenn has served on several nonprofits’ boards, in addition to providing pro bono legal counsel. Among them are Kids Matter Inc. and Curative Ranch Community Services.

The primary concentration of his practice is as “a small business advisor, with a subspecialty in nonprofits,” he says. But Frenn keeps his hand in litigation, too, and identifies two significant, published cases as highlights in that realm.

First, in Frisch v. Henrichs, 2007 WI 102, the Wisconsin Supreme Court outlined a family court’s powers to employ remedial contempt, where a party consistently failed to produce financial information, but produced it immediately before a contempt hearing.

Second, in Allied Insurance Center Inc., et al. v. Wauwatosa Savings and Loan Association, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld a circuit court judgment in his client’s favor, by concluding that the bank acted in a commercially unreasonable manner by accepting improperly endorsed checks, payable to the insurance agencies, for deposit into the personal checking account of an employee of the agencies.

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