The Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility is requesting that Michelle MacDonald, who is a candidate for the Minnesota Supreme Court, “be suspended from the practice of law for a minimum of 90 days as a sanction for her misconduct.“
The request to suspend MacDonald’s law license was made in a court filing by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility in response to a disciplinary hearing which was held earlier this month.
In March, the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility petitioned the Minnesota Supreme Court to discipline MacDonald after determining that she violated the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct governing licensed attorneys and the conditions of her probation by which she could practice law.
The petition was filed after the completion of a 21-month investigation into MacDonald, which began after Michael Brodkorb and Allison Mann filed a formal complaint with the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility in June 2018 in response to MacDonald filing a lawsuit against Brodkorb and Missing in Minnesota. The lawsuit filed by MacDonald was dismissed in March 2019 by a judge in Ramsey County.
Senior Judge E. Anne McKinsey was appointed by Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea as the referee to hear the petition for disciplinary action against MacDonald. McKinsey is scheduled to release her findings and recommendations for discipline against MacDonald by October 20, 2020.
According to the brief filed last week, MacDonald “violated Rule 3.1, MRPC” when she filed her “factually frivolous defamation lawsuit” against Brodkorb and Missing in Minnesota. The brief is damning and details numerous violations by MacDonald of the rules governing licensed attorneys in Minnesota.
The filing from the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility validates the work of Brodkorh and Missing in Minnesota in reporting about Michelle MacDonald, as one of the reasons they want her suspended is because she filed “a factually frivolous lawsuit against a local journalist [Brodkorb], which was dismissed after over a year of costly litigation.”
