High court revokes Eau Claire attorney’s license

Listen to this article

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has revoked the license of an Eau Claire attorney and ordered him to pay more than $16,000 in restitution.

Friday’s discipline stems from a complaint filed in 2015 by the Office of Lawyer Regulation alleging that Thad Gegner had committed 24 counts of misconduct and asking that his license be suspended for two years.

Four months later, the OLR added more charges, bringing the total to 43 counts of misconduct involving 11 of his clients. The OLR asked the court to revoke his license and ordered him to pay $12,000 in restitution to former clients and insurance companies.

After Gegner retained counsel, both the OLR and Gegner asked the case to be suspended while they discussed Gegner filing a petition for consensual license revocation. Gegner filed that petition in September, admitting that he could not defend himself against the OLR’s charges as well as the four other OLR investigations pending against him.

The OLR supported the petition, and a referee recommended that the justices also revoke Gegner’s license and order him to pay restitution to several clients and the Wisconsin Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, which had already paid some clients’ claims.

The court on Friday granted Gegner’s request and took the recommendations of the referee, revoking Gegner’s license and ordering him to pay restitution.

The court ordered Gegner to pay more than $16,000 to clients and to the fund. That amount included $1,000 that the OLR and referee did not include in their recommendations for restitution. According to court documents, the OLR could not identify an amount to seek in restitution.

The court wrote in Friday’s per curiam decision that it did not see any reason to make the members of the State Bar, part of whose dues support the fund, finance the return of the money when they were not the ones who had committed misconduct. Follow @erikastrebel