Oak Creek attorney faces 9-month suspension

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An Oak Creek attorney faces a license suspension of nine months over eight counts of misconduct.

According to an Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint filed Tuesday, Karene Marchan broke eight Wisconsin Supreme Court rules governing attorney conduct while representing Shelly Chappelle of Oak Creek in a divorce case.

Chappelle had hired Marchan in 2014 to replace her current lawyer in the case, which had already been going on for two years.

According to the OLR, Chappelle’s former attorney had been holding more than $160,000 in trust from the sale of a farm and transferred that money to Marchan, who deposited it into her trust account. Later, the OLR alleges, Marchan withdrew $12,000 in cash from the account. Current rules prohibit cash withdrawals from trust accounts.

The OLR also alleges that Marchan failed to return more than $70,000 to Chappelle. Marchan should have been holding that money in trust at the end of the divorce proceeding after paying opposing counsel and herself. Her failure to do so violated a court order issued by Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Marshall Murray.

Chappelle, who had asked at various times for the money to be returned, called the Oak Creek Police Department in 2015, reporting that she feared Marchan had stolen the money. Marchan told the police that the dispute would be submitted to arbitration, but it never was, according to the complaint. Chappelle later filed a grievance with the OLR.

Marchan also charged unreasonable fees, according to the OLR. After less than a year of working on the case, Chappelle had paid Marchan $32,000. Despite receiving that money, Marchan was unprepared for litigation. In one instance, Marchan blew a deadline to answer interrogatories, despite having met with Chappelle for several hours three days a week.

The OLR also alleges that Marchan retroactively billed charges that advanced Marchan’s interests rather than her client’s, including charging for mileage incurred from going to court to ask for the case to be adjourned because Marchan was ill. Marchan also refused to give Chappelle her case file unless Chapelle paid for a copy for Marchan to keep. Invoices showed that Marchan charged $200 an hour, according to the complaint.

Other allegations included that Marchan failed to take action to resolve Chappelle’s divorce for six months, failed to cooperate with the OLR while it was investigating Chappelle’s grievance and did not communicate with and consult Chappelle.

Marchan could not immediately be reached Friday.

The OLR is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend Marchan’s license for nine months and order her to pay more than $76,000 in restitution to Chappelle.

Marchan earned her law degree from Marquette University Law School in 1996. Her license has been temporarily suspended since October for failing to pay bar dues, file an OLR trust-account certificate and cooperate with the OLR in its investigation. Follow @erikastrebel