Kenosha lawyer faces 9-month license suspension.

Byline: Erika Strebel, erika.strebel@wislawjournal.com

A Kenosha lawyer faces a nine-month license suspension over allegations that he violated more than a dozen attorney-ethics rules.

The Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a complaint on March 25 alleging that Ricardo Perez had broken the state's attorney-ethics rules 21 times.

Eighteen of the alleged rule violations stemmed from his representation of four clients in personal-injury matters.

Even though theclients had hired Perez, he would fail to respond to theircalls or requests forthe latest newson their cases and fail to take action on their personal-injury claims, according to the complaint. Perez would also fail to give them their case files whenhis representation of them ended.

In the case of two clients, the OLR alleges that Perez lied to the clients. Inanother case, one involvinga clientwho had hired him in December 2015, he told the client he had formally sought her medical records but her treatment provider said in March 2017 that it never received such a request.

In May 2017, Perez emailed the clientto tell her he had sent her medical records to the insurer. In fact, though, he had never sent them, according to the complaint.

In August 2017, Perez told the same client he had sent a claim notice to the insurer and that a response was due the next day. However, he never sent the claim notice, according to the OLR.

All four clients filed grievances against him. When the OLR attempted to contact Perez about those actions, he failed to respond, according to the complaint.

Perez's failure to respond resulted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court's temporarily suspending his law license in February 201 for failing to cooperate with the OLR when it was investigating the grievances clients had filed against him.

The remaining...