Sending Brochure to Potential Clients re Ex-Partner's Prosecution Costs PI Lawyer $35K and Reprimand
An acrimonious relationship with a lawyer for whom he formerly worked, decades ago, is costing a Wisconsin personal injury lawyer $35,000 and a public reprimand.
Although it dismissed two of three counts of a legal ethics complaint against attorney Michael Hupy, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded today that a brochure sent by the attorney’s firm to potential clients included misleading commercial speech. In a written opinion (PDF) that discusses legal advertising standards at length, the court sanctioned the longtime practitioner, who has never been disciplined before, for saying in the brochure that his former partner, who had been criminally charged and convicted, was then still practicing law pending an appeal.
In fact, while this statement had been true earlier, when the brochure was mailed out in previous years, it wasn’t true when the brochure again was sent to potential clients in 2006. By that time, Hupy’s ex-partner had served his sentence and been suspended from practice (he was subsequently reinstated). Hence, the brochure was misleading and an appropriate basis for legal ethics sanctions, the court held.
It rejected an argument by Hupy that he shouldn’t be reprimanded, because the brochure didn’t name his former partner, whom the court found to be identifiable from the facts described in the brochure.
And it also rejected Hupy’s contention that sending the brochure out again in 2006, unrevised, was simply an innocent mistake rather than a reckless act in contravention of known facts.
“The referee found that attorney Hupy was aware of the suspension of [his ex-partner’s] license to practice law in August 2005,” the opinion states. “Indeed, attorney Hupy had his firm’s outside legal counsel stand outside the [ex-partner’s law] firm’s offices … on the date the suspension took effect in 2005 to ensure that [the ex-partner’s] name had been removed from all signage. This was not a situation where Attorney Hupy was ignorant of what the situation was at the time that he republished the brochure in 2006.”
The court was split on whether a postcard sent by Hupy to potential clients about his former colleague, which included the headline “Beware: You will Probably Get a Letter from a Law Firm Whose Senior Partner Went to Prison on November 28, 2003,” violated legal ethics rules.
And a majority agreed that a sticker on legal advertising celebrating the 35th anniversary of Hupy’s firm passed ethical muster.
Hat tip: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Proof & Hearsay blog.
