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Justices put lawyers in hot seat over challenge of license suspension

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//November 13, 2017//

Justices put lawyers in hot seat over challenge of license suspension

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//November 13, 2017//

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court last week drilled the retained counsel for the Office of Lawyer Regulation and a Madison lawyer over whether a referee had properly recommended that the lawyer’s license be suspended for a year.

The recommendation stemmed from charges the Office of Lawyer Regulation filed in 2013 against Wendy Alison Nora, alleging four counts of misconduct involving her work in her own foreclosure case.

Since then, Nora has unrelentingly fought the allegations, filing a discrimination lawsuit against Dane County Judge Juan Colas and suing her banks’ lawyers in federal court for $10 billion in compensatory and punitive damages, according to the OLR’s complaint.

The OLR also alleged that one way Nora continued to litigate the foreclosure of her property was by filing a federal lawsuit in a New York bankruptcy court. That suit was directed against the same attorneys and firms, plus 25 other defendants. It was filed even though the case had already been resolved in a Wisconsin court and Nora had already filed a nearly identical case in the Western District of Wisconsin.

The OLR is seeking a one-year suspension of Nora’s law license.

The referee in the disciplinary case, Lisa Goldman, issued a report on Jan. 13 agreeing with the one-year license suspension and finding that Nora had no legitimate purpose in bringing the lawsuits against Colas, Potteiger and Foshag. Goldman also found the lawsuits were meant as harassment and recommended that Nora pay more than $50,000 in restitution to Gray & Associates and Bass & Moglowsky.

Nora filed a notice on Feb. 1  stating that she would be appealing Goldman’s report.

She is contending, among other things, that her due-process rights were violated during the OLR’s investigation and during the disciplinary hearing. Nora is arguing that the referee in the disciplinary case should have recused herself, that Nora was not given due process because she was unable to finish presenting evidence during the disciplinary hearing and that she is being punished for representing defendants in bankruptcy cases. Nora contends the court should vacate Goldman’s findings and grant her a new hearing and assign a new referee to the case.

The OLR, in defending Goldman’s report, is contending, among other things, that due-process rights did not apply during the OLR’s initial investigation of the misconduct and that there were no due-process violations during the disciplinary hearing. The OLR noted, for instance, that all the parties had agreed ahead of time to the length of the hearing.

Nora represented herself at oral arguments on Tuesday; the retained counsel Paul Schwartzenbart appeared on behalf of the OLR.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley asked Nora to clarify what action the court should take should it agree with Goldman that the OLR had proved that Nora had committed misconduct.

“What is the appropriate sanction?” asked Bradley.

Chief Justice Pat Roggensack asked Nora to respond to the OLR’s allegation that she had advanced a lawsuit in federal district court although doing so violated the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which allows only the U.S. Supreme Court to review state court judgments entered in civil cases.

“How do you respond to the assertion that you knowingly advanced an argument in violation of that doctrine?” Roggensack asked.

Justice Dan Kelly asked Schwartzenbart more than once about Nora’s claim that the hearing had been cut short.

“Is my understanding correct that the OLR’s position is that she mishandled her hearing time?” he asked. “Was this issue brought up?”

Bradley and Roggensack paid most attention to an email from one of the lawyers who represented the banks in Nora’s foreclosure case.

“Is there an easier answer to my question about why OLR didn’t produce the email?” asked Bradley.

“Is the email in the record?” Roggensack asked.

The appeal before the justices last week is not the only disciplinary case pending against Nora. There is a second one stemming from a complaint in 2015 in which the OLR alleged that Nora had committed five counts of misconduct involving her representation in both state and federal courts of two clients in foreclosure proceedings. The referee’s recommendations in that case are now due in January.

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