A Wisconsin jury has found a former partner of a large international law firm guilty of stealing $370,000 from an elderly client who prosecutors said suffered from dementia.
Dorothy Phinney, now 94, became a client of Milwaukee lawyer Jeffrey Elverman in 2000, when he was a partner at the firm of Quarles & Brady. In 2003 and 2004, Phinney signed checks to Elverman, who held her power of attorney, totaling $370,000. The payments came to light in 2008, shortly after a Milwaukee County judge found Phinney incompetent and appointed a community services agency as her guardian. The guardian has also filed a pending civil suit alleging Elverman took more than $600,000 from Phinney.
At trial, prosecutors presented a caregiver's records showing that Elverman met with Phinney for about an hour a week, on average. To justify $370,000 in fees, Elverman would have had to work 30 hours a week for Phinney at his $150 hourly rate, an assistant district attorney told the Milwaukee County jury.
But Elverman's lawyer countered that although Phinney couldn't name the president or identify a stapler, she understood her own finances well enough to know she wanted Elverman to help her handle them and she intended to pay him the money.
"This case is about Dorothy Phinney's ability to consent," attorney Daniel Drigot told the jury in his opening statement. "It's not about whether she was too generous or Mr. Elverman was too greedy." Elverman did not testify at his trial.
Elverman left Quarles & Brady in 2004 for unrelated reasons. The firm's internal investigation following Elverman's departure raised concerns about his representation of Phinney, but Elverman refused to allow Quarles & Brady to contact Phinney.
Elverman faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000.
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