A federal lawsuit brought against Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne by a former assistant district attorney was settled for $350,000 Thursday.
Former assistant district attorney Bob Jambois filed the lawsuit against Ozanne and members of his staff in February 2017. It alleged they had harassed him in retaliation for challenging Ozanne in the district attorney election in 2016.
Ozanne won his second term as district attorney in the election with 73 percent of the vote.
During the campaign, Jambois, who had previously been district attorney of Kenosha County, accused Ozanne’s office of mismanagement. Ozanne, who is Wisconsin’s first African-American district attorney, responded by accusing Jambois of making racially-charged comments toward him.
Following the election, Jambois claimed Ozanne and deputy district attorneys Corey Stefan, Matt Moeser and Mary Ellen Karst forced him to retire by shifting the county’s most difficult cases onto his calendar, as well as assigning him more cases than he could handle.
Jambois resigned from the District Attorney’s Office in August 2017, claiming in the lawsuit that there had been “extraordinary burdens placed upon him.”
William Conley, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin, dismissed the case after the settlement Thursday.
