Attorney Kevin M. Jereczek of Green Bay represented the four defendants in a Brown county civil action, and, in the course of that representation, executed a Stipulation of Judgment, dated October 25, 1993, in which he represented that he had the "full authority" of each of the defendants to allow the plaintiff to take judgments against them. In fact, Jereczek had no authority to execute the Stipulation; had not consulted with his clients regarding the Stipulation; and had failed to even bring the Stipulation to their attention before he signed it. Further, Jereczek did not inform any of his clients of his execution of the Stipulation or the resultant entry of a Judgment against each of them, and the earliest any of the clients learned of the Judgment was in January 1994, from sources other than Jereczek.

After certain of the defendants learned of the Judgment, they contacted Jereczek, who continued in his failure to disclose his execution of the Stipulation, and suggested to his clients that the Judgment derived from judicial error. Further, one of Jereczek's clients, in the approximate period of mid-January 1994 to December 1994, placed about 14 telephone calls and one facsimile communication with Jereczek's office, which went unreturned. Jereczek did not provide any of his clients with notice of a Revised Judgment, entered in March 1995; continued at that time in his failure to disclose the Stipulation of Judgment; told one client (after entry of the Revised Judgment) that the Court had not acted after vacating the original Judgment; and represented to another client, who had learned of the Revised Judgment from a source other than Jereczek, that entry of the Revised Judgment was the result of a mistake.

The defendants retained successor counsel, who moved to vacate both the Revised Judgment and the Stipulation of Judgment. The Court granted the motion, having determined that Jereczek's assertion of "full authority" to execute the Stipulation was misleading on its face; that Jereczek had misled his clients as to his actions; and that Jereczek's own testimony established that the Stipulation had been executed without requisite authority.

The Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility concluded that Jereczek's execution of the Stipulation without having consulted with his clients violated SCR 20:1.2(a); that his misrepresentation of "full authority" to execute the Stipulation, which was filed with the Court, violated SCR 20:3.3(a)(1) and 20:8.4(c); that his failure to inform his clients of case developments and his failure to return the calls of one client violated SCR 20:1.4(a); and that his failure to inform his clients of his execution of the Stipulation, along with his making of misleading statements as to the reason for the entry of a Judgment and the actions of the Court after vacating the original Judgment, violated SCR 20:8.4(c).

Mr. Jereczek has been disciplined on two previous occasions. In 1993, Mr. Jereczek was privately reprimanded by the Board for violating SCR 20:8.4(c) when he drafted and presented to a third person a document which he misrepresented to be a conformed copy of a court order in his own divorce action, when, in fact, no such order had been issued and no divorce action had even been filed. In April 1996, the Supreme Court ordered a 60-day suspension of Jereczek's law license, effective May 27, 1996, for misconduct in multiple matters, involving violations of SCR 20:1.3, 20:1.4(a), 20:1.9(a), 20:3.3(a)(1), 20:5.5(a), 20:8.4(c), and 22.26(2). The disciplinary action leading to the 60-day suspension was pending (and ultimately decided) before the Board was able to consider the present facts, which prevented their inclusion in the disciplinary action.