Did the Supreme Court just warn Wisconsin lawyers that it intends to start treating sexual harassment a lot more seriously?
Maybe, but its latest discipline decision should get lawyers' attention, regardless of interpretation.
In an unsigned opinion, the court detailed the complaint against Nathan DeLadurantey, a Brookfield consumer lawyer. He was assessed with more than $17,000 in costs in a case that both parties thought should have been a private reprimand, and which a referee felt was not even an ethics violation.
The official offense? Exhibiting an offensive personality, contrary to the oath lawyers take for admission to the state bar. The Office of Lawyer Regulation dismissed a second charge of sexual harassment.
It also accused the referee in the case, retired circuit judge Robert Kinney of Mequon, of victim blaming for suggesting DeLadurantey's drunken sexual advances were "not unwelcome.'' He asserted the woman involved was "moving the goal posts" during the relationship and that "an office extramarital relationship is not necessarily an offense that reflects adversely on a lawyer's fitness to practice law."
That perspective, the court found, ignores the record and the key fact that DeLadurantey was the woman's boss.
Through his attorney, DeLadurantey declined to comment about the ruling. The complaining lawyer, Heidi Miller, did not immediately return a message.
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