One of Wisconsin’s Most Expensive Homes Embroiled in a $15 Million Lawsuit

One of Wisconsin’s most high-profile home sales in recent years is embroiled in a $15 million lawsuit.

The property in the center of it all is a 20,000-square-foot lakefront mansion known as Aloha Lodge, which is situated on 12 acres in the town of Linn, near Lake Geneva.

Now, the seller and plaintiff, the non­profit Harold B. Smith Foundation, is suing former pharmaceutical executive Jack McGinley, who submitted a $37.5 million offer to buy the historical property, which has 10 bedrooms and 13.5 baths.

The lawsuit filed on Dec. 5, 2025, claims that the offer effectively stalled the property, causing it to lose market momentum, and that when McGinley later backed out of the purchase, the seller suffered losses of approximately $15.6 million.

According to the lawsuit, that amount reflects the difference between McGinley’s initial offer and the mansion’s eventual August 2024 sale price of $21.85 million.

"The Foundation has alleged that Mr. McGinley not only breached the contract, but also did not comply with the duty of good faith and fair dealing that is implied in the contract," says a statement the foundation provided to Realtor.com®.

What allegedly happened

Accord­ing to the law­suit, McGin­ley and his wife had a private showing of Aloha Lodge on May 18, 2023, and sub­mit­ted a writ­ten offer to pur­chase it for $37.5 mil­lion the following day.

The seller accepted the offer on May 20, 2023, which cre­at­ed a bind­ing con­tract, the law­suit claims.

The lawsuit claims that McGinley delayed the deal after his offer was accepted by asking for more showings and pushing back the inspection.

Within three days of finalizing the contract, the lawsuit claims that McGinley's agent reportedly said McGinley might withdraw due to a health issue.

Rather than formally seeking to exit the contract on medical grounds, the lawsuit claims, McGinley sought to renegotiate several of its terms—including a health-related walkaway provision and a delayed closing.

"This was a standard real estate negotiation subject to attorney review and approval, and no final, binding contract was ever completed," John Ruskusky, McGin­ley’s attor­ney, tells Realtor.com. "Jack properly invoked the attorney review provision in a timely manner—within five days—to request reasonable changes, which the seller failed to address, making the proposal null and void by its express terms."

In the lawsuit, the found­a­tion said it respon­ded to McGinley's new terms, but that he was unre­spons­ive, so the con­tract was voided on June 14, 2023.

Lawsuit says illness was leveraged to renegotiate the deal

The law­suit claims that McGin­ley’s health crisis was exag­ger­ated to get out of the deal, and he inten­ded to “keep the Prop­erty off the mar­ket and attempt to extract bet­ter terms than those to which he had agreed.”

The lawsuit claims that the inspector of Aloha Lodge spoke with McGinley's wife after McGinley had been pur­portedly admit­ted to the hos­pital and repor­ted to McGin­ley’s agent that the inspec­tion had been sched­uled and that McGin­ley was only "a little under the weather."

However, Ruskusky tells Realtor.com that McGinley suffered a "documented, life-threatening pulmonary embolism requiring emergency care and hospitalization.

"Plaintiff’s attempts to minimize the severity of that event is inaccurate, irresponsible, and callous," Ruskusky says.

Alleged pattern of bad behavior

The lawsuit also claims McGinley has a pattern of breaching contracts, citing a $38 million Palm Beach deal he exited in which the property was later sold for $29.3 million.

But Ruskusky tells Realtor.com, “Jack is a highly reput­able, long­time par­ti­cipant in numer­ous suc­cess­ful real estate trans­ac­tions, and we flatly reject any alleg­a­tions to the con­trary."

The foundation stated that selling Aloha Lodge at a reduced price negatively affected the nonprofit groups it funds.

"As alleged in the lawsuit, Mr. McGinley’s actions have caused significant losses to the Harold B. Smith Foundation, which supports a variety of charitable causes in the greater Chicago area. The Foundation seeks to recover these losses exclusively for the benefit of the charities that it supports and intends to support in the future," the foundation said.