Rep. Wood Stiffs Firm

It would take only $367.50 for Rep. Jeffrey S. Wood (R- 67^th) to settle the court judgment entered against him by an Eau Claire law firm in a case that dates back to 1990. But so far, the firm might have as well received wooden nickels from Wood, now of Chippewa Falls.

The information in Herrick Hart, et al v. Jeffrey S. Wood, Eau Claire County Circuit Court 1990SC002349 shows us that the Eau Claire law firm was awarded the judgment against Wood on October 30, 1990. It was entered into the court docket on December 13^th, 1990 at 1:30 p.m. and has remained unpaid since then.

Wood was 21 then, and apparently had need for legal representation at the time. It is not immediately clear from court records why Wood hired the prestigious Eau Claire law firm.

It couldn’t possibly be for the criminal charges Wood faced for writing worthless checks, since he didn’t have problems along those lines until 1992.

Wood, born on September 12^th, 1969, is a “former small business owner and local government reporter,” and “former member Libertarian Party of the Chippewa Valley,” according to his official biography. The married father of two was elected to the assembly in 2002, and has been able to find the money to pay the $500 in speeding fines he has accumulated in three incidents since he took office. He also satisfied a decade-old, $238.50 judgment to Luther Hospital of Eau Claire in 2001, just before announcing his candidacy for the legislature

The good news is he has recently received at least $6,000 from the estate of Scott W. Trippler of Eau Claire, where he recently served as personal representative, and is thus entitled to a two per cent cut of the $304,700 estate, which had its final disposition on November 10^th, 2006. It could not be immediately determined if Wood was also a beneficiary of the Trippler estate. As of this writing, neither Wood nor the law firm of Herrick & Hart, S.C. has responded to a request for information about the unpaid judgment and about the need for legal representation that precipitated it.