Walworth County attorney pleading no contest to misconduct charges

Listen to this article

A Walworth County attorney has agreed to plead no contest to six charges of ethical misconduct.

The charges stem from an Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint filed in 2016 against the East Troy-based attorney Patrick Hudec. The OLR alleged he violated six attorney-ethics rules while handling cases in Waukesha and Walworth counties. According to the allegations, Hudec failed to keep a client reasonably informed about a case and failed to enter into a written fee agreement with a client that laid out the scope of the work he would do and the reasons ;for his fee.

The OLR had asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend Hudec’s license for 60 days.

Hudec, who is representing himself, filed an answer to those charges in November and denied that he had committed all six counts of misconduct and asked that the OLR’s complaint to be dismissed. Hudec also suggested that lawyer-regulators investigate a lawyer a client had hired to replace him.

A hearing before the referee in the case, Rick Esenberg, had been scheduled in December, was rescheduled for April and again moved to August 27.

Ahead of his deposition, Hudec filed a signed stipulation in May pleading no contest to the misconduct alleged in the complaint and agreeing to a 60-day suspension. But after faxing it to the OLR, Hudec attempted to take it back, pointing to language in the stipulation about following any judgment made against him in a lawsuit out of Waukesha County, according to the OLR.

The OLR asked Esenberg in a letter dated June 18 to hold Hudec to the stipulation he had signed.

Esenberg filed an order on June 28 instructing the OLR and Hudec to brief the matter, noting that there appeared to be a “non-frivolous – and perhaps correct” argument that the stipulation was binding on Hudec.

Esenberg also noted that the hearing scheduled for August would go forward then unless a compelling reason arose for not holding it then.

Hudec on Tuesday filed a letter saying that he neither had the money nor desire to continue the proceedings, which he called “long-festering,” and said he wanted to reinstate the stipulation, according to court filings.

However, Hudec also asked the court to strike the OLR’s analysis of the stipulation in its letter from June 18 to the court or allow him to file his own analysis of the stipulation.

Regardless of whether Esenberg accepts the stipulation, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will issue a final decision in the matter. Follow @erikastrebel