Lisa Stark

Authored the majority. A property-rights dispute under a flood-management statute. Stark read the provision the way it is actually structured—within the larger act it belongs to—to confirm that the common-law remedy survived alongside the statute. Textbook whole-act analysis, applied without dramatics.

A couple bought property near a road. Years later, flooding damaged their land, and they sued the town. The town argued an old flood-management law took away the couple's right to sue. Stark read the law in the context of the whole act it belongs to. She held that the older lawsuit option still works. Property owners get to use both their old rights and the law's protections. That is the right answer when a law does not say it is replacing older rules.

Authored the majority. An involuntary-commitment case turning on a 48-hour deadline. The legislature had explicitly preserved jurisdiction in one part of the commitment scheme but stayed silent in another. Stark read that silence as deliberate—protecting due-process rights of someone facing commitment, anchored in the legislature's actual choices, not policy preferences.

The state can hold someone for psychiatric care for short periods if a court orders it. There is a 48-hour rule. The case asked whether the state could keep someone past the deadline because of how the commitment law was written. Stark looked at the structure of the law. The legislature had specifically said the court keeps power in one part of the law, but said nothing about it in another. Stark held that the silence was on purpose. The state did not get extra power the law did not give it. The result protected an individual's rights and stayed inside what the legislature wrote.

Authored the majority. An Open Meetings Law case. Stark rejected an interpretation that would have grafted a "rational justification" requirement onto a statute the legislature never wrote. The same discipline that protects rights from being read out of statutes also keeps statutes from being expanded past their words.

Wisconsin's Open Meetings Law is designed to keep government business public. The case asked whether courts could add a "good reason" test to the law that the legislature never wrote in. Stark said no. Adding new tests is the legislature's job, not the court's. By stopping at what the law actually says, she kept the rule simple and predictable. Officials and voters know exactly what they are dealing with.

Joined the majority. A property-insurance dispute over what counts as a "vacant" building when the owner is actively trying to lease it but has no current tenants. The policy used the phrase "customary operations" without defining it. Stark joined the unanimous panel that found the term ambiguous and applied the standard rule: when a drafted contract is unclear, the ambiguity is construed against the drafter. A clean application of established insurance-contract doctrine.

Joined the majority. A federal-firearms case asking whether Wisconsin expungement counts as "expunged or set aside" under federal law. Stark joined the panel's faithful application of Braunschweig, the controlling Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent, which held that Wisconsin expungement removes records but doesn't invalidate the underlying conviction. The result was unfavorable to the gun purchaser, but it was the result Wisconsin precedent required. Follow precedent where it leads—even when it leads someplace inconvenient.