High court dismisses disciplinary case against Eau Claire lawyer

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a second disciplinary complaint filed against an Eau Claire lawyer, noting that the OLR can choose to stop pursuing certain violations if it deems them too trivial.

The Office of Lawyer Regulation charged Michael Rajek in 2014 with four counts of misconduct stemming from a fee dispute with a client and flaws in the fee agreement he had drafted for that client and another client. The OLR alleged, among other things, that Rajek had failed to respond to representatives of the State Bar’s arbitration program and had asked that his license be suspended for 60 days.

However, the OLR reconsidered its position after the justices declined in 2015 to discipline Rajek in a separate matter, and the agency reached a stipulation with Rajek last year in which Rajek agreed to submit his dispute to arbitration and rewrite his fee agreement. The OLR agreed to ask that the complaint be dismissed

The referee in the case, James Erickson, filed a report in April recommending that the case be dismissed.

The justices on Friday agreed with Erickson’s recommendation. But it noted that they had asked the OLR to file a supplemental brief explaining whether the stipulation followed the court’s prohibition against plea bargains in disciplinary cases and whether the stipulation should be amended to contain the customary language indicating that the stipulation was not the result of a plea bargain. The justices also asked the OLR to explain its reasoning for agreeing to dismiss the charges in exchange for Rajek’s compliance for the rules.

The justices wrote on Friday that they were satisfied with OLR’s response that its change in position stemmed from the justices’ decision in 2015 indicating that the fee-agreement violations did not warrant disciplinary measures and that the stipulation did not need an amendment because the OLR believed that Rajek fully understood his rights and that a change would only delay the case further. The OLR also noted that a recent change to its rules has given it discretion to decide whether to prosecute violations that it might deem trivial.

This is the second time the justices have dismissed a complaint against Rajek, who earned his degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law and was admitted to practice law in Wisconsin in 1974. He was privately reprimanded in 1986 and publicly reprimanded in 2006. The court also dismissed an OLR complaint against him in 1993. Follow @erikastrebel