September 22, 2005

Milwaukee personal-injury attorney Charles J. Hausmann pocketed $77,000 in referral payments without disclosing the payments to clients. David Giacalone thinks he got off too easy with two months in a minimum-security facility. Now, if you take the "law is just like any other business" view, you might argue that for a lawyer to get kickbacks from chiropractors is not all that different than, say, a hotel concierge's getting kickbacks from restaurant owners for steering business, which would probably not result in prison time. On the other hand, David cites a possibly aggravating factor:

Hausmann would have the chiropractor write checks to third parties, including a charity whose bank account Hausmann controlled (and which used some of the funds for landscaping at Hausmann's residence). One of the charities named Hausmann its "attorney of the year" in August 2003.

That's aside, of course, from the question of whether lawyers should be held to higher standards than hotel concierges.