Referee recommends triple sanctions for Lake Geneva attorney

Listen to this article

A referee is recommending that a Lake Geneva attorney’s license be suspended three times longer than what lawyer-regulators had requested.

The referee’s recommendation stems from a complaint filed in March against David Schiltz of Schiltz Law Office. According to the allegations, Schiltz practiced law while his license had been suspended for failing to complete continuing-legal-education requirements, refusing to turn over half of the proceeds of a real-estate sale to an estate until a judge ordered him to and failing to hold thousands of dollars in trust.

The OLR alleged Schlitz broke 19 attorney-ethics rules and asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend his license for 6 months. Later, the agency added six more rule violations to the complaint but did not change its request for discipline.

Although Schiltz was served, he never responded to the complaint – and never appeared at a hearing on the OLR’s motion for default judgment.

The referee in the case, the retired judge Dennis Flynn, granted the OLR’s motion in August and recommended that Schiltz’s license be suspended for a year and half.

Flynn criticized the OLR’s unchanged request for a six-month suspension, which accompanied a request calling on Schiltz to pay restitution and the full cost of the proceeding.

“The latter 2 requests appear justified in the case record, but the former doesn’t make sense to this referee,” he wrote. “This attorney has made no response to serious misconduct charges, has continued to practice law after his license was suspended, has converted client money to himself and hasn’t responded to OLR’s repeated written requests for information regarding filed grievances.”

Flynn also recommended that Schiltz pay $3,305 worth of restitution to a client and complete 25 hours of continuing-legal education concerning ethics and trust accounting.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will review Flynn’s recommendations and issue a final decision in the matter.