Joel Brodsky, Drew Peterson’s former lawyer, facing two-year suspension in misconduct

A state disciplinary panel recommended that attorney Joel A. Brodsky — best known for representing convicted wife-killer Drew Peterson — should be stripped of his license for two years following an investigation into a series of misconduct allegations.

In a report Tuesday, the Hearing Board of the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission ruled that “aggressive tactics and relentless vindictiveness” characterized Brodsky’s pattern of wrongdoing in three separate cases.

“That mindset, combined with his demonstrated pattern of behavior, his failure to recognize the wrongfulness of much of his misconduct and his lack of sincere remorse, leaves us skeptical that he will change his tactics,” the report states.

The panel’s recommended two-year suspension would be made retroactive to last June, when the Illinois Supreme Court stripped him of his law license on an interim basis. The state’s high court will now rule on the latest recommendation.

That recommendation stems from a complaint the commission filed in 2018 regarding Brodsky’s behavior in the three cases. Tuesday’s report ultimately affirmed many of the charges lodged against Brodsky, including that he accused an opposing attorney of extortion and questioned the existence of an expert witness’ son while he was representing S&M Auto Brokers in an odometer rollback case in a federal case in Illinois’ Northern District.

In 2018, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall fined Brodsky $50,000 for his conduct in the case and ordered him to take ethics and anger management classes.

“Throughout the course of the litigation, the court has observed first-hand Brodsky’s unprofessional, contemptuous and antagonistic behavior directed at opposing counsel,” Kendall wrote of Brodsky’s conduct, which included sending “vitriolic emails” to other attorneys.

Kendall also referred Brodsky to the district court’s executive committee to be barred or suspended from practicing law in federal court in Chicago. He was ultimately suspended last April for a year, though that suspension was later reduced to six months when Brodsky accepted responsibility and paid a fine.

In addition, the Illinois Supreme Court previously suspended Brodsky’s law license in 2004 for three months “for mishandling $23,000 of client funds, with no dishonesty involved.”

“As his actions in that matter were dissimilar to his present misconduct and a significant amount of time has since passed, we give little weight to his prior discipline,” Tuesday’s ruling states.

Peterson — the former Bolingbrook police sergeant convicted of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio — has blamed Brodsky for his conviction based on Brodsky’s decision to call a divorce attorney who provided bombshell testimony against Peterson during the trial. Following Peterson’s conviction in 2012, a Will County judge took issue with how Brodsky handled himself following the verdict.

Brodsky also represented Robert Rialmo, the fired Chicago cop who shot and killed two people while responding to a domestic disturbance at a West Side home in 2015.

Brodsky couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. But Tuesday’s ruling noted that he was “bullied as a child, and felt an element of bullying behavior” in two of the cases.

“If he is confronted with contentious situations now, he brings in another lawyer to respond or consults other lawyers for advice,” the report states. “He knows his comments can become public, and would not insult anyone in an email.”