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State justices disagree on attorney’s suspension

By: Caley Clinton, [email protected]//February 21, 2013//

State justices disagree on attorney’s suspension

By: Caley Clinton, [email protected]//February 21, 2013//

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An attorney with a history of professional misconduct was handed a 60-day suspension Thursday, but it didn’t come without some discord among justices.

Two of the state’s justices — Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley — indicated the punishment should have been stricter.

Whitewater attorney John Dade has been subject to professional discipline on four prior occasions, according to court records. He was privately reprimanded in 1991, publicly reprimanded in 2007, suspended for 60 days in 2007, and publicly reprimanded again in 2012.

Dade has repeatedly been accused of a lack of diligence and failure to communicate.

The latest 60-day suspension stems from Dade’s professional misconduct in handling a client’s divorce, where he was again accused of failing to communicate and showing a lack of diligence, according to court records.

In a dissenting opinion, Abrahamson, joined by Bradley, wrote she “would not accept” the 60-day suspension, saying the punishment “is not in keeping with the concepts of progressive discipline or with assisting Attorney Dade in changing his behavior to protect the public.”

In agreeing to a 60-day suspension, the rest of the court wrote, “After careful review of the matter, we adopt the stipulated facts and find it appropriate to impose a 60-day suspension of Attorney Dade’s license to practice law.”

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