In race for judge, Fugle stresses leadership, experience

Oneida County circuit court judicial candidate Michael Fugle’s legal career may not have been a straight line from college to courtroom — a ski slope or two might have been involved — but the Oneida County corporation counsel says his life path has nonetheless given him the experience and leadership skills Oneida County needs right now in a judge.

Fugle grew up in Minnesota and spent summers and weekends at his grandparents’ farm in southern Minnesota before attending Carroll College in Waukesha, he explained in a recent interview with The Lakeland Times. After college, there were decisions to make but, in those days, Fugle says, what he really wanted to do was ski. 

So he moved out to Hunter Park, Colorado, where he worked at the front desk of a hotel — a job he says allowed him to ski about 130 days a year.

“They needed a front office manager, so I did that because I could still ski,” Fugle said. “And then they needed an assistant general manager, but I could still ski. So I did that and then I went from four years of being a front desk clerk to being the general manager of a 118-room resort hotel with a 70-seat restaurant.”

In 1996, Fugle said, Condé Nast Traveler Magazine identified his operation as the 20th best ski hotel in the world. 

“And so I managed the resort hotel, which is obviously a 24-hour operation, and I was skiing five days a years,” he said.

At that point Fugle said he believed it was time for a change.

“I figured I could ski five days a year and do it in a row if I had another job,” he said. “And so that’s when my wife and I decided to go to law school. I quit my job at the hotel so I could study for the LSAT [law school admissions test] because at this point, I’ve been out of school for 10 years.”

After about a month of studying for law school, Fugle said the couple discovered that his wife was pregnant. The hotel would have taken him back, Fugle said, but the die was cast, and, as it turns out, Marquette was the school that offered him the largest amount of scholarship money.

“It made sense,” he said. “My family was in Minnesota, hers was on the East coast, but I wasn’t too zipped up about moving back to Minneapolis and I wasn’t zipped up about moving to the East Coast. So I went to Marquette Law School.”

While in school, Fugle worked as a bartender at an iconic Milwaukee pizza place, where he happened to meet a lawyer whose firm needed a law clerk. Fugle took him up on the offer and says that was the only legal job he had before moving to Rhinelander.

“I worked for this firm through law school as a clerk, and then I started working there as an attorney,” he said. “They paid me a salary, and then I ate what I killed. We partnered on a public defender contract doing 250 cases a year, which was me doing the contract. They did a good amount of civil litigation.”

Those attorneys were growing older and winding down, Fugle said, but he spent a great six years at the firm, gaining court experience and getting to know, and learn from, experienced attorneys.

“In Milwaukee, over those six years, I had 14 criminal jury trials,” he said. “I had one civil trial, and a discrimination case.”

Moving on up, literally

It might have been a great six years, but Fugle said the expense of living in Milwaukee started to catch up.

“We had four kids with a fifth on the way and health insurance was killing us,” he said. “The firm I worked for, they didn’t have a plan because they were all on Medicare. So I had to go out and get insurance on my own and it was really expensive, and that’s when I started looking for a job that would have benefits.”

He looked outside of Milwaukee — he says he and his wife were both “kind of happy to move out of Milwaukee” — and, in 2008, he applied for and won the job as Oneida County assistant corporation counsel. And, like that, the Fugles were moving on up to the North.

About a month or so after landing the job, Fugle scored another plum. Super Lawyers, which describes itself as a rating service of outstanding lawyers who have attained a high-degree of peer recognition and professional achievement, named him a rising star.

Those early days in Rhinelander were the stuff of memories, Fugle recalled. While he was trying to sell his house in Milwaukee, the young attorney and his family rented a small cabin.

“The five of us lived in a 500-square-foot cabin, and we had two bunk beds in one bedroom, and the other bedroom had my suits and a Pack n Play, and then we had an air mattress that we would throw on the floor,” he said.

Fugle says it was the greatest summer the family ever had.

“We were at an old resort, and there was a beach,” he said. “It hardly rained, so there were no trapped-in-the-cabin days. It was fabulous.” 

Since moving to Rhinelander, Fugle has not only stayed busy with his job but has jumped into as much civic activity in the community as time will allow, coaching football, serving as president of the Gridiron Club for three years, and becoming involved in the Boys and Girls Club in Rhinelander. 

“So the first 13 years of my job, I handled all the CHIPs (Children In Need of Protection or Services), the Mental Health Act, the guardianship protective placement cases, and the Boys and Girls Club really fit in well,” he said. “And I think there’s unfortunately a perception that the Boys and Girls Club, ‘it’s like the poor kids,’ but it really fills a need. We’re seeing a lot more behavioral issues in the schools.”

Legal work, judicial philosophy 

Fugle says his work as the assistant corporation counsel and now as the corporation counsel for Oneida County has prepared him well to serve as a circuit court judge.

“For six years, I did a good deal of criminal defense work in Milwaukee,” he said. “It is high volume there. I had 14 criminal jury trials. And I did the civil trials. I’ve done extensive civil litigation. I mean from filing a complaint through motion practice, which most civil cases end up in motions for summary judgment. I couldn’t tell you how many of those I wrote, but I have a great deal of experience in accumulating the entirety of the case, trying to get to the point where there’s no genuine issue on material facts so that you can move for summary judgment.”

On the defense side, Fugle said, his experience ranges from doing motions for summary judgment under pleadings to pretrial civil practice with interrogatories’ requests to admit depositions, as well as his considerable experience in CHIPS and guardianship protective placement.

“So I have a pretty broad and deep experience across the entire spectrum of law,” he said. “One of the things that my firm in Milwaukee had me doing is they had a decent landlord practice. So I have experience in small claims court with evictions, and I have some real estate law experience just as it comes about. And then a quarter of what my office does relates to child support enforcement and paternity. And so I’ve got my hands in there as well.”

As far as judicial philosophy, Fugle says it starts with what he believes a judge has to remember and to know each day that he or she is a judge — that “half the people who are appearing before you, it’s probably the worst day of their life in some way, shape, or form. And so there’s a real gravity to it. I don’t take running for judge or being a judge lightly. You’re making consequential decisions about people’s lives.”

Fugle also says a judge has to have three traits — a judge has to be fair, a judge has to have compassion, and a judge has to be stern.

“One of the most difficult things as a parent is when you have to drop the hammer on your kid for when they continually cross the line,” he said. “And that’s tough because there’s the whole internal bargaining aspect of, well, if I just do this or just do that. But it’s really about making important decisions and understanding the gravity of those, but also not being afraid to make them.”

As a judge, Fugle says, a person is going to have to make decisions they don’t like. 

“You can talk about how someone can be a judge and just make the decisions they like, or what they do is they go out and they make everything a finding of fact rather than a finding of law,” he said. “Because then the finding of facts will evade review. That’s not what I would do and that’s not who I am.”

Still, Fugle says, a judge has to be cognizant of how important the position is.

“You are there to ensure that the laws are applied equally to everyone in the community,” he said. “So if you know this guy and you think he’s got great kids, and the kid does something terrible, the person you don’t know who does something terrible, there should be the same result. And that’s what it boils down to without bias or preference.”

Proudest accomplishments

One of his proudest career accomplishments did not actually occur in court, Fugle said, but on a commission he was appointed to by then chief justice Pat Roggensack to address legal representation for parents in child removal cases. 

In particular, Fugle says he helped moved the needle on changing public defender conflict of interest rules that would ease the difficulty of finding outside counsel for parents when conflicts existed, especially in rural areas.

Fugle said he had a case where everyone had been waiting for months to get counsel appointed. 

“And so it was a case that was just languishing and not moving forward,” he said. “And the parents didn’t want to work with social services because they thought they were going to have a lawyer who was going to win the whole thing for them. And in that case, actually, I finally contacted attorneys I knew, and I said, ‘there’s still no attorneys for this case.’ And actually they got involved and within two months the people had their kids back. Once they had someone fighting for them, they were able to maneuver through the system.”

Fugle says he always feels great at the end of an adoption hearing when a child is legally adopted into a family.

“Just generally, when we do a TPR (termination of parental rights) case, it is absolutely brutal for everyone involved, but going to that adoption hearing, and seeing those kids whose biological parents weren’t able to care for them and are almost always heavily involved in drug addiction, and so they get with this foster family and you can see them grow with that family.”

And then the day of adoption is a pretty cool day, Fugle said.

“Because the kids, they’ve been a part of the family forever and the foster parents have said they love them and all that,” he said. ”But the kids now are like, this is my forever family. That’s a great feeling.”

But Fugle says its also great when children are returned to their biological parents.

“I really enjoy it when I can sit in before court, before we go in, before we’re going to dismiss a CHIPS case, to tell the parents how I’m really proud of them and tell them, ‘You really pulled this together,’” he said.

Mental health

When it comes to mental health issues and the court’s participation in various diversion programs, such as those advocated for by chief justice Annette Ziegler, Fugle says it’s generally a tough spot for the court because the court isn’t there to be the diversion.  

“But I think the court can be a part of the diversion process,” he said. “And mental health and AODA issues are intertwined. You’ve got people who have mental health issues and they don’t go and see a psychiatrist, they don’t get on medication, but they have to do something to try and alleviate the symptomatology, and so they turn to meth or marijuana or what have you.”

Right now, Fugle said, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, along with the Drug Endangered Children Committee, is trying to find useful diversions. 

“And the thing with diversion is, you can force people into a diversion, but you’re not going to necessarily be that successful, probably more successful when you’re able to address their mental health than their AODA,” he said.

People have to acknowledge they need to change their behaviors, Fugle said.

“People have to, for better or for worse, I don’t want to sound callous, but they’ve got to realize that their life is messed up and that change is needed because otherwise you can go through AODA to avoid consequences, but you’re not actually learning to avoid using, which is what causes you to get in a situation where you need to try to avoid the consequences,” he said.

Fugle discussed whether he believes incarceration is supposed to be a deterrent, or punitive, or rehabilitative.

“It’s supposed to be all three,” he said. “It’s supposed to. And some of it depends on the context. I mean, for a homicide case, there’s probably a lot more significant punitive aspect to it, but you still have to hopefully prepare that person to come back into society. Now, without parole as a whole, that’s punitive. But there can be some rehabilitation in that as well. And so it does combine all three.”

Fugle says a judge must also comprehend the different ways victimization occurs and that repeat offenders don’t always stop offending on their own.

“If someone keeps burglarizing lake homes, there’s got to be a consequence for it,” he said. “And burglary is, I mean, it’s a serious crime, but it’s something that is really violative. There’s a huge feeling of violation for the person whose lake house was broken into and they stole the TV and that sort of stuff.” 

And some people say, ‘well, they’ve got insurance,’ but that misses the point, Fugle said.

“Just because you can replace the item doesn’t mean that now, when you’re leaving, that you don’t lock the house and then go around and lock it one more time, and now you have to turn on your security cameras and all this other stuff because you were violated,” he said.

And it can happen anywhere, Fugle said. 

“And now, how you have to walk in the parking lot late at night, I mean, it goes across the whole spectrum,” he said. “And so again, as a judge, you’re sentencing the person in front of you. You also have to understand you have to sentence that person, but the person who is being sentenced needs to understand that it wasn’t just, ‘oh, they got insurance. What’s the big deal?’”

It’s not just explaining that because you committed this crime, you should be on probation, be in prison, be in jail, or some combination of the above, Fugle said.

“There’s a chance to reach that person, which is a chance that I have in my job in CHIPS cases,” he said. “I always sit down with the parents before the hearing, and I’m like, ‘We’re going to ask the kid to be placed with so-and-so, but this isn’t that you don’t love your child, this isn’t that you’re a bad person. This is, there’s this situation which is really messed up and you need to fix it. And for some people they can take that to heart. And I can see them a year later and I’m like, ‘you did a great job and I am really proud of you.’”

In many cases Fugle said, both as corporation counsel and as a judge, the court officials are some of the more responsible adults they come into contact with. 

“Even if they’ve done something terrible, they’re still a person and they deserve to be treated with that dignity,” he said. “And I think that’s important for a judge to know and remember, even though there might be real good reasons to not like them.”

Fugle says he does not support red flag laws.

“I haven’t yet seen good ones,” he said. “As we have it now, if someone is mentally ill, if someone is detained under Chapter 51 — if the doctors say they’re sufficiently dangerous — we’ll get them on a commitment order. If they’re on a commitment order, there’s an order that’s entered that they’re not allowed to possess firearms.”

Subsequently, Fugle said, they can petition the court to have their right restored and their firearms returned and for that to happen they need to have a doctor clear that the person is OK.

“I think that’s a sufficient process,” he said, pointing out that under Chapter 51 three adults who have personally witnessed the person’s violent or dangerous behavior can petition the courts for a civil commitment assessment.

In addition, Fugle said, there is no due process in a red flag law, as far as he knew.

“That’s a big issue,” he said “In a chapter 51 proceeding, there’s counsel appointed. The hearings can be closed at the request of the subject, but it’s not just some people going out and trying to get someone. With the three party petition, we’re still having that hearing in 72 hours.”

Leadership

Fugle says the best state Supreme Court decision for him is Kalal v. Dane County, which Fugle says sets forth the whole canon of statutory interpretation. 

In that case, the court established a controlling two-step framework for interpreting statutes. The initial setup is to start with a statute’s text. If the meaning is clear, that’s the only step. If it is ambiguous , the court turns to external sources of interpretation, such as legislative history.

“You look at the plain meaning of the text, you look at the words in the context of the statute, you look to the ordinary and reasonable definition of the words,” Fugle said. ”So Kalal to me is a seminal case because I think it informs us, it pulled back the court from engaging in examinations of legislative intent, which is, what does the court want to have happen? I think that is an impermissible result of legislative intent because if you could look at legislative intent, you can make findings of fact, and especially in important legal decisions, it needs to be rulings of law.”

Ultimately, the race is about leadership, Fugle said. 

“And I have shown that I’m a leader, from going in four years from a front desk clerk to general manager to my community involvement,” he said. “When my predecessor left, the county board unanimously appointed me that very next month to be the attorney for Oneida County, to handle the civil aspects.

And at that point we had a very diverse county board, Fugle said.

“And so I think that speaks to my ability to play it straight, and that’s what I do,” he said. “It’s leadership. It’s community involvement. We chose to raise our family here. We took five kids, came up from Milwaukee, and this is our home. I know that, when it comes to being fair and humble and unbiased, that I’m the best person to sit on the Branch II bench.”