Opinion ID: 1926090
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: client j.v.p.counts 1-2

Text: [2] ¶ 9. Cavendish-Sosinski was appointed in July 2000 in federal court to represent J.V.P. in a habeas corpus matter. Respondent and J.V.P. subsequently disagreed about the representation and the respondent's failure to communicate with him. J.V.P.'s initial complaints to the OLR concerning these problems were dismissed but that investigation was subsequently reopened focusing on Cavendish-Sosinski's alleged failures to communicate with J.V.P. after March 2001. ¶ 10. J.V.P. wrote to Cavendish-Sosinski on April 11, 2001, asking her questions about his case, but she did not respond. Then, on April 30, 2001, a staff member at the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) attempted to set up a telephone conference between Cavendish-Sosinski and J.V.P.; although the DOC staff member left a message and number for Cavendish-Sosinski to call, she did not return his call. On May 2, 2001, the staff person again tried calling her, but Cavendish-Sosinski's voice mailbox was full. ¶ 11. On May 21, 2001, on June 19, 2001, and again on June 26, 2001, an OLR staff member wrote to Cavendish-Sosinski regarding her failure to respond to J.V.P.'s request for information. Cavendish-Sosinski failed to respond to the OLR investigative letters. ¶ 12. On July 26, 2001, a fourth OLR investigative letter was sent to Cavendish-Sosinski. This time she responded in a letter dated August 7, 2001, stating that she had not answered J.V.P.'s April 11, 2001, letter because I was trying to professionally deal with his blatant accusation that I had lied to him in this office. ¶ 13. The OLR subsequently referred this matter to the district committee for investigation. On May 23, 2002, and again on June 5, 2002, the district committee investigator wrote to Cavendish-Sosinski requesting that she contact him; on May 29, 2002, the investigator attempted to contact her by telephone. Cavendish-Sosinski did not respond to these letters or return the phone call; she did not cooperate with the district committee's investigation until after she had personally been served with a notice to appear. ¶ 14. Based on this course of conduct, the referee concluded that the respondent had committed the violations asserted in Counts 1 and 2 of the complaint. Specifically, the referee concluded that Cavendish-Sosinski's conduct constituted a failure to respond to reasonable requests by a client for information, in violation of SCR 20:1.4(a) and failure to cooperate with an OLR investigation and with a district committee, in violation of SCR 22.03(2) and 22.04(1).