The Minnesota Supreme Court has disbarred prominent Twin Cities attorney Michael Padden for mismanaging and misappropriating client funds, failing to show up for court hearings and forging a client’s signature on a payment agreement.

Padden, whose office was in Lake Elmo, was suspended from practicing law on Dec. 29 and disbarred Wednesday. He was admitted to the Minnesota bar in 1986.

Attorney Michael Padden speaks at a news conference with family members of slain Minnesota Department of Corrections Officer Joseph Gomm on May 20, 2021. Behind him are Gomm’s brother-in-law Chris Cone and sister Audrey Cone. (Mary Divine / Pioneer Press)

The disbarment order of the Minnesota Supreme Court outlined misconduct over several years:

In May 2022, Padden represented a client in several cases for a $5,000 flat fee. A few months later, Padden withdrew from each case, though they were pending, and failed to refund the unearned portion of the fee.

A month later, Padden created a forged fee agreement purportedly entitling himself to $25,000 that another client had given him in 2021 as part of a criminal case. He has yet to give back the funds.

Two months after that, Padden signed a fee agreement with a client, who paid him an $8,500 advance fee. Padden did not obtain a receipt countersigned by the client for the payment, and he did not deposit the fee into his trust account. Three days after retaining Padden, the client terminated the representation and requested a full refund, which Padden refused. Padden stated that he had spent more than 30 hours on the matter and that the $8,500 was a “lump sum.”

Last year, Padden failed to appear for at least five court hearings involving four cases. In one, Padden twice failed to appear at his client’s plea hearing, resulting in a warrant for his client’s arrest. In another, Padden and his client did not appear in court for a criminal trial, and Padden then failed to comply with the requirements to withdraw from his client’s representation.

“These admitted allegations — including that Padden misappropriated $25,000 in client funds and then concealed the misappropriation by forging a client’s signature on an amended fee agreement — are serious,” the order read.

Padden’s misconduct was neither a “brief lapse in judgment” nor a “single, isolated incident,” the order continued.

He cited PTSD, a lost cellphone

Padden’s misconduct was disclosed in January 2023, shortly after the director of the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility filed a petition for disciplinary action against him alleging seven counts of misconduct.

Padden answered the initial petition, but he failed to answer to an August 2023 supplementary petition, Wednesday’s order said. Based on Padden’s failure to answer, a referee deemed the allegations in the supplementary petition admitted.

After a three-day evidentiary hearing in October 2023, the referee found that Padden had committed additional misconduct, the order said. Padden testified, in support of mitigation, that he had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and that he has suffered from depression for most of his life. Padden provided almost no evidence of these conditions other than his own testimony, the order read.

Padden also said that he was experiencing various problems throughout the time of his misconduct that negatively affected his business, including that he lost his phone and that a longtime assistant briefly went to work elsewhere. The referee, assessing Padden’s credibility and the evidence presented, rejected the arguments in support of mitigation.

Padden did not respond immediately respond to messages left for him Wednesday seeking comment on the order.

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Padden was involved in a number of high-profile cases over his nearly four-decade-long career.

In the mid-2010s, Padden successfully represented two plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against Toyota Motor Corp., arguing a throttle design defect was partly to blame for a 2006 St. Paul crash that left three people dead and two seriously injured.

More recently, Padden represented Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, in a 2019 lawsuit against a then-Rice County Sheriff’s sergeant who said in a 2017 social-media post that Reynolds was a cocaine user. The defamation suit stated allegations of cocaine use were false and defamatory. Reynolds sought more than $50,000 in the suit, which was settled in July 2020 for an undisclosed sum.

He also represented the family of Corrections Officer Joseph Gomm in their efforts to seek compensation for his 2018 murder at the Stillwater prison.