Colorado lawyer running naked at Phish concert leads to disciplinary action against second lawyer
Sarah Schielke, a Northern Colorado lawyer who has achieved prominence for winning millions of dollars for clients who have sued police departments for excessive force and wrongful arrests, has accepted a public censure by the Colorado Supreme Court for her treatment of another attorney who admitted to running naked at a concert by the band Phish in Mexico in 2022.
According to a disciplinary summary dated Jan. 26, Schielke represented a friend of hers who had attended a concert near Cancun featuring Phish. Schielke's client alleged another Colorado lawyer who happened to be at the concert, Vincent DiMichele, had injured her at the February 2022 show "while naked, shoved the client and other crowd members when he attempted to rush the stage..."
According to the discipline, Schielke wrote DiMichele a letter calling him a"violent psychopath ... violent a--hole ... an idiot ... a shameless, ridiculous boasting s--t ... a terrible f---ing attorney ... a disgrace to the Colorado Bar, the Phish community, and (his) family."
Regulators said Schielke requested that DiMichele pay Schielke's client $50,000, agree never to touch or contact the client again and stay 25 feet away from the client at future Phish concerts. In exchange, wrote regulators, Schielke's client would not sue the lawyer, would not disclose the incident to the lawyer's undergraduate university and she would not complain to the lawyer's employers. However, if DiMichele declined the proposal, regulators said Schielke threatened to issue a press release with the complaint along with an un-redacted video allegedly showing the lawyer engaged with security at the concert. In addition, regulators said Schielke told DiMichele she would bring claims against him in federal district court and in Mexico as well as report the lawyer's conduct to local police where the incident took place.
State administrators say Schielke's conduct violated two guidelines, including one that prohibits lawyers from threatening others to obtain an advantage.
Reached by phone, DiMichele said he had "no comment" on the discipline against Schielke or his conduct at the 2022 concert.
In a statement to CBS News Colorado, Schielke explained her actions.
This guy decided to strip naked and violently stampede through a peaceful crowd at a beach concert. In so doing, he hurt a number of people. One of the people he hurt was my close friend - someone I love and care about. She had just recovered from spinal surgery and this naked DiMichele guy sprinted into her back, trampled her down into the sand, and then he stomped on her neck, leaving her injured, sobbing, and traumatized. And that wasn't the end of it. The next day, using his actual name, he went online and bragged about it, in multiple public forums, causing my friend even more distress. He shared and re-shared a photo someone had taken of him trying to wrestle away from concert security in the nude. He proudly introduced himself as "the naked guy" to strangers on his flight home. Since he kept sharing his name, someone looked him up. And then we learned that the self-proclaimed "naked guy" who had just assaulted dozens of people at a beach concert in Mexico and who was now delighting in the pursuit of attention and clout for having done so was... a Colorado lawyer. It was a lot. I am zealous in my representation. Here, a naked lawyer hurt my best friend, and my passion for righteousness clearly went too far.
State records show DiMichele's Colorado law license is currently inactive. Those same state records show the public censure of Schielke is the first disciplinary action taken against her Colorado law license.