Green Bay attorney faces revocation, may need to cough up $40K

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A Green Bay attorney faces the revocation of his law license over allegations that he, among other things, mishandled more than $40,000 in client money.

The Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a complaint on March 28 charging Paul Boltz of Green Bay-based Boltz Law Offices with 10 counts of misconduct stemming from his dealings with a client he represented in a divorce proceeding in Kewaunee County and a client who hired him to represent her in a small-claims case out of Brown County.

The OLR alleges that in the divorce case, the client gave Boltz $40,000 in March 2016. That was supposed to be retirement money that was part of a marital estate that was to be held in Boltz’s trust account until the court issued a judgment in the case.

The court had already held the client in contempt for wasting marital property, sending him to jail for six months, and for refusing to refund money taken from his retirement account while the divorce was pending. The court additionally ordered that the client not make any withdrawals from his retirement account or from the $40,000 held by Boltz.

The court awarded $40,000 on April 25 to the client’s wife and ordered Boltz to transfer the money to the opposing counsel’s trust account within five days.

The judge in the case, Keith Mehn, ordered Boltz twice to deliver the money to opposing counsel, who also wrote letters asking for information about the $40,000.

The OLR alleges that Boltz lied on two occasions about what happened to the money. In one response, Boltz said he had run out of trust-account checks and would deliver the money as soon as the new checks were delivered, according to the complaint. In another response, Boltz said he was pressed for time and would deliver the money as soon as he could.

In reality, Boltz couldn’t deliver the money because it wasn’t in his trust account. He had already withdrawn the $40,000 from his account, making 53 cash withdrawals from March 2016 to June 2016, according to the complaint.

Mehn reported Boltz to the OLR, which started a formal investigation and asked Boltz to provide his trust-account records. Boltz failed to do so but responded that he had run out of checks. The OLR alleges that Boltz still has not delivered the $40,000 to opposing counsel.

With regard to the small-claims case, the court entered in 2016 into a $1,466.50 judgment against Boltz’s client and ordered the client to pay within 15 days or file a financial-disclosure statement.

At a contempt hearing, Boltz and the client eventually paid the judgment. However, the court ordered Boltz’s client to pay $192.70 because the opposing party made more than one attempt to serve the contempt motion on Boltz’s client. The judgment remains unpaid, according to the complaint.

The opposing party in the case filed a grievance against Boltz, contending that the client had been paying Boltz $100 payments to pay off the court judgment. The client, the OLR discovered, had paid Boltz $500 but Boltz never turned that money over to opposing counsel. The OLR subpoenaed Boltz’s trust-account records and found no deposit of the money nor the source of the money used to satisfy the $1,466.50 court judgment, according to the complaint

The OLR is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to revoke Boltz’s law license and pay $40,000 in restitution to the wife of his client in the divorce case out of Kewaunee County. Revocation means Boltz would be banned from practicing law in the state, although he could petition the court for reinstatement after five years.

Boltz could not immediately be reached Friday at the email address or telephone number listed on the State Bar of Wisconsin website.

Once he is served, Boltz has 20 days to respond to the complaint. The high court will appoint a referee to preside over the case and make recommendations, which the high court will review.

Boltz, who earned his law degree from Hamline University School of Law in 1992, has not been previously publicly disciplined by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. However, his license has been suspended since Oct. 31 for failure to pay mandatory bar dues and provide certification of his trust account, and it was suspended again in January for failing to cooperate with the OLR in an investigation. Follow @natebeck9