A federal judge in Colorado issued a scathing rebuke of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for allegedly submitting a court filing rife with errors because his attorney allegedly used a generative artificial intelligence program, citing several court cases that don’t exist. The filing came in connection with a defamation lawsuit against the pillow magnate filed by Eric Coomer, the former head of product security for Dominion Voting Systems, over the numerous false claims levied against him and the company by Lindell following the 2020 presidential election.

According to a six-page order from U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang, the incident began when Lindell’s attorney, Christopher Kachouroff, came unprepared to an April 21, hearing. During that hearing, Wang questioned Kachouroff about a number of errors in an opposition motion he had signed and filed.

“These defects include but are not limited to misquotes of cited cases; misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases, including discussions of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions; misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; misattributions of case law to this District; and most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist,” Wang wrote. “Despite having every opportunity to do so, Mr. Kachouroff declined to explain to the Court how the Opposition became replete with such fundamental errors.”

Kachouroff initially claimed that he had simply “made a mistake” and accidentally “paraphrased” some cases, but eventually told the court that he had “given the cite checking to another person.”

“Time and time again, when Mr. Kachouroff was asked for an explanation of why citations to legal authorities were inaccurate, he declined to offer any explanation, or suggested that it was a “draft pleading,” the judge wrote.

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Ethics

Ex-Wisconsin justice who led election review should be compelled to sit for deposition in ethics case, motion says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 6, 2025, 10:00 am CST

A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice should be compelled to sit for a deposition before a disciplinary review board, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation argued in a Feb. 28 motion.

The motion asks the Wisconsin Supreme Court to require Justice Michael J. Gableman’s appearance March 20 and 21 and to state that a failure to appear will result in his admission to the facts in a disciplinary complaint. Filed in November 2024, the complaint alleges ethical misconduct in Gableman’s investigation of the 2020 election for the Wisconsin State Assembly.

The motion to compel was filed after Gableman said through his attorney he would not show up for a scheduled February deposition “after much consideration, including Fifth Amendment concerns.”

WisPolitics.com and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered the motion to compel.

Gableman was initially hired by Republican Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to help a legislative committee gather facts about how recent elections were conducted in Wisconsin and to suggest possible legislative changes. Gableman’s duties were later expanded, and he was named a special counsel. He was fired in August 2022.

Gableman included in an appendix to his legislative report his legal opinion that the state could decertify the results of Wisconsin’s 2020 general election in which former President Joe Biden was declared the winner.

Gableman’s election review did not find significant fraud, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“Taxpayers paid more than $2.3 million for the investigation,” the newspaper reports, “which yielded a steady drumbeat of explosive court hearings and rulings in lawsuits over his desire to jail election officials and mayors who refused to be interviewed behind closed doors, and his decision to ignore requests from the public for records related to his probe.”

Besides serving as a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, Gableman was a former prosecutor, a circuit court judge and an adjunct law professor teaching professional responsibility. Before agreeing to represent the committee, he worked in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for the first Trump administration.

He had “by his own admission, no understanding of how Wisconsin elections worked,” the ethics complaint says.

Part of the ethics complaint concerns Gableman’s quest for information from the cities of Madison, Wisconsin, and Green Bay, Wisconsin, and their mayors. After issuing subpoenas to the mayors, Gableman negotiated agreements that made their appearances unnecessary, the complaint says.

Yet Gableman allegedly failed to tell the legislative committee about the agreements or about his receipt of thousands of pages of documents from the cities. He also falsely said he issued writs of attachment against the mayors because they “failed without reason or excuse to appear for their depositions,” the ethics complaint alleges.

Gableman is also accused of including false statements in the petitions for writs of attachment when he claimed that the two mayors had failed to appear for a deposition “without justification.”

Another part of the complaint alleges that Gableman made improper comments during and after a court hearing on a public interest group’s public-records request. Gableman was called to testify.

Gableman allegedly criticized Judge Frank Remington of Dane County, Wisconsin, who was presiding, instead of responding to questions. He claimed that Remington “has abandoned his role as a neutral magistrate” and later said, “You want to put me in jail, Judge Remington? I’m not gonna be railroaded.”

In a later June 2022 decision and order, Remington said Gableman made his accusations in a “sneering” fashion, raised his voice and pointed and shook his finger at the judge.

During a hearing recess, when the microphone was still live, Gableman allegedly made remarks that “demeaned and belittled opposing counsel by making allegations of improper collusion with the court and by portraying her as an incompetent lawyer whose only role was to aid Judge Remington in his bias,” the ethics complaint says.

After the hearing, in remarks to the press, Gableman again alleged that Remington had abandoned his neutral role.

“The deck was stacked,” he told reporters.

Another allegation in the complaint is that Gableman wrongly revealed information about his representation of the state Assembly committee as a guest on video broadcasts organized by Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow and a supporter of President Donald Trump.

Gableman said he supported an effort to recall Vos, that Vos did not want a serious investigation, and that Vos was a “serial liar who is interested only in his personal monetary financial gain.”

To support his allegation that Vos didn’t want a serious investigation, Gableman described discussions with Vos and staff members, revealing information related to the representation, the ethics complaint says.

The motion to compel says Gableman has a right to refuse to answer deposition questions when he has reasonable cause to think that his answers could expose him to criminal liability, but he does not have the right not to appear for the deposition.

Gableman is represented by lawyer Peyton B. Engel, who did not immediately reply to the ABA Journal’s request for comment via email and voicemail.

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With equal parts derision and seriousness, a Georgia attorney representing one of the defendants in the YSL racketeering (RICO) trial filed a motion on Tuesday castigating the latest tactic employed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her top lieutenant.

The title of the defense motion sums up the current dispute:

Opposition To State’s Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”

A footnote in the filing by defense attorney Doug Weinstein concedes: “Wow. That is really a mouthful.”

The judge overseeing the Georgia racketeering (RICO) and election interference case against Donald Trump denied a motion by the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party to dismiss election subversion charges based around the fake electors scheme.

David Shafer, the erstwhile Peach State GOP head, was charged in the August 2023 indictment with eight counts including impersonating a public officer, forgery in the first degree, false statements and writings, and criminal attempt to commit filing false documents.

In motions, and during a late March hearing in Fulton County, Shafer’s attorney, Craig Gillen, argued the indictment was defective because of the way prosecutors referred to the legally-suspect effort to have alternate, “contingent,” or fake electors deliver Electoral College votes to the 45th president instead of Joe Biden in several swing states.

“While special demurrers typically contend the charging instrument contains insufficient detail, here, the Defendant does not complain that the indictment is defective because it lacks necessary information,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee explained in the April 4 denial order. “Instead, he suggests certain charges must be dismissed because they contain too much, and that what they contain is legally inaccurate.”

Donald Trump scored a legal win in Florida when a federal judge appointed by him rejected special prosecutor Jack Smith’s effort to force the former president to reveal a part of his legal strategy.

In November, Smith filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to order Trump to tell prosecutors whether he intends to use an “advice-of-counsel” defense against allegations he improperly retained and stored classified documents.

According to Smith’s June 2023 indictment, classified documents were kept at various places at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, including in a bathroom, a shower, and the former president’s bedroom. At one point, Trump is alleged to have showed off the documents in July 2021 at his golf club in New Jersey.

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Law Firms

BigLaw firm’s motion was copied ‘nearly verbatim,’ boutique firm alleges in copyright lawsuit

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 2, 2024, 12:15 pm CST

Updated: A boutique law firm alleges that Winston & Strawn infringed its copyright by filing a motion to dismiss that has a “striking resemblance” to the boutique firm’s motion.

Winston & Strawn copied the motion “nearly verbatim,” the Hsuanyeh Law Group, a Boston firm, claims in its Dec. 26 lawsuit.

“Defendants did not even rewrite their own introduction,” according to the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Publications with coverage include Above the Law, which noted a social media post about the case by advertising attorney Rob Freund, and the Inner City Press.

The Rule 12 motion filed by the Hsuanyeh Law Group on Aug. 23 sought to dismiss patent infringement claims by Unification Technologies. Winston & Strawn, which represents a co-defendant, filed its Rule 12 motion the next day. The Hsuanyeh Law Group obtained a copyright for the motion Aug. 30.

The Hsuanyeh Law Group seeks actual and statutory damages, noting that the maximum statutory damage for copyright infringement is $150,000.

The suit includes a copy of a Dec. 15 letter signed by Brant C. Weidner, Winston & Strawn’s assistant general counsel.

Weidner said the threatened copyright claim “suffers from numerous substantive infirmities,” but he wanted to focus on the claim for statutory damages of up to $150,000.

Because the Hsuanyeh Law Group obtained the copyright after the alleged copying, the Hsuanyeh Law Group can only recover if the motion was “published” before registration, Weidner wrote. But filing a document in federal court through PACER doesn’t constitute publication within the meaning of the copyright act, Weidner said.

A publication requires commercial advantage, which doesn’t happen with a PACER filing, Weidner said. At best, the filing constituted a “public display” of the motion, he said. And even if statutory damages were available, the most that could be recovered would be $30,000 for nonwillful infringement, Weidner asserted.

“You will not be able to show willfulness in this matter,” Weidner wrote. “Indeed, no case has ever held that a law firm’s copying of a co-defendant’s motion constitutes infringement.”

Cases cited by the Hsuanyeh Law Group involved Westlaw’s use of publicly filed briefs, held to be fair use, and copying from a draft brief that hadn’t been filed, according to Above the Law.

A Winston & Strawn spokesperson declined to comment.

Updated Jan. 3 at 1:14 p.m. to reflect that a Winston & Strawn spokesperson declined to comment to the ABA Journal.

The Florida hospital that was recently found civilly liable for medically kidnapping a young girl to the point it drove her mother to suicide lost its first bid for a new trial on Wednesday afternoon.

The new trial motion was based on shocking allegations of juror misconduct allegedly committed by Juror Number 1.

Chief among those claims was the notion that the juror had an extreme dislike of one of the defense witnesses, a hospital employee named Sally Smith. In a headline-generating filing, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg suggested that Juror No. 1 likened Smith to the Nazi Schutzstaffel, widely known by their initials, SS.

Before the hearing, the court severely cabined the line of questioning that the juror would be subject to — entirely short-circuiting the hospital’s efforts to bring up the Nazi-Smith imagery allegations.

Whither Child Services?

The questioning began with Judge Hunter W. Carroll showing the juror a court filing submitted by his then-wife in 2002. Both agreed the case was more or less over before it began. The juror was served, and his then-wife never showed up for a scheduled hearing.

That 20-plus-year filing had something to do with minors — because the couple had three children at the time, judge and juror established. Carroll then asked Juror No. 1 some pointed questions.

First, the judge wanted to know if the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) had any involvement with the three minor children.

The juror said he did not.

Then, the judge asked if the DCF ever sheltered his children.

Again, the answer from the juror was a “No.”

In their first supplemental motion for a new trial, hospital attorneys argued Juror No. 1 “may have harbored ill feelings” toward DCF.

So, the judge asked the juror if, at the time the Kowalskis filed their lawsuit, he had any “strongly held opinions” about the DCF.

The juror said he did not. The judge got slightly more specific.

“How about the government’s ability to remove children from the care of their parents?” Carroll asked.

To which the juror replied: “No opinion at all.”

Debra Salisbury, J.D.

An even shorter series of inquiries concerned a Sarasota-based attorney named Debra Salisbury, who represented the Kowalski family while Maya was still being kept away from her family.

The hospital claims that Salisbury represented or was otherwise involved with the juror’s current wife during a 2007 case.

That case did not include the juror — he married his wife in 2016.

In response to Carroll’s questions, the juror said he did not know Salisbury, had never heard about her until All Children’s made their allegations in the new trial motions, and that he has, to his knowledge, never been around Salisbury in any kind of official proceeding.

The Court’s Instructions

Questioning then turned to wider and more specific issues about the instructions Carroll gave jurors when the proceedings began.

In response to a question, Juror No. 1 said he followed all the court’s instructions. Pressed by the judge, the juror said he did not speak with anyone, including his wife, about the case while it was in progress.

Earlier efforts by the hospital to win a new trial included allegations that Juror No. 1 shared information about the case with his wife, who then shared the information in online, pro-plaintiff communities.

“Are you able to tell me for sure that your wife — or no one else — no one gave you any information about this case at all?” Carroll asked.

“No one,” the juror replied. “And I did not seek out any information.”

Other questions about outside information — either coming or going — resulted in the juror saying that he did not obtain any information about the case while it was going on in any other way. Specifically, when asked, he said he never saw the website of one of Maya’s primary care physicians — stressing that he neither searched for it himself nor saw it when someone else searched for it.

Juror No. 1 Leaves

With the juror outside the courtroom, the hospital asked for a few additional questions to be leveled against Juror No. 1.

An attorney for the hospital explained that the juror’s wife came into court one day during the trial and watched the proceedings.

The hospital wanted the judge to inquire as to whether (1) the juror had any discussions with her about her attendance beforehand, (2) whether the juror saw his wife in court that day, (3) whether the juror and his wife communicated in any way during the trial that day; (4) whether they had lunch together that day; and (5) whether or not the couple talked about the day’s proceedings after the fact.

An attorney for the Kowalski family objected to all of the questions offered by All Children’s — noting that the court did not order anyone to be mute with their wife or not to look at their wife.

“We believe that these questions are completely inappropriate and lead us nowhere,” the plaintiff’s attorney said.

The judge did pare the questions down a bit.

Juror No. 1 Returns

Upon returning to the stand, the juror and judge established that the man’s wife appeared in court the day before he dyed his hair orange for Halloween — a significant point only for memory’s sake.

Asked whether he saw his wife in court that day, the juror said he did not — because he suffers from various issues with his vision.

Then, Carroll asked Juror No. 1 if he knew his wife was coming to court that day. He said he did know that she was coming. The juror said his wife expressed interest in attending that same morning — and that he acknowledged her request: “I said ‘fine with me’ and that was the end of the conversation.”

The juror said there was no communication between himself and his wife — visual or non-visual — in court that day.

The juror was then released.

Closing arguments

Closing arguments were exceptionally quick.

An attorney for the hospital said the defense’s argument comes down to credibility. He said their side wanted to ask additional questions but understood the court foreclosed against them.

The Kowalski family’s attorney was also succinct.

“The court essentially wrote our argument,” the plaintiff’s attorney said. “It’s time to put this to bed.”

The judge then tersely ruled in favor of the Kowalskis.

“At the end of the day, the defense has failed to demonstrate any juror misconduct,” Carroll ruled. “The court will therefore deny the motion for new trial based on juror misconduct.”

The ordeal suffered by then-10-year-old Maya Kowalski and her family is famously depicted in the popular and critically acclaimed Netflix documentary, “Take Care of Maya.” A roughly two-month-long civil trial earlier this year reprised the claims made in that film against the hospital for the way staff there treated the chronically ill girl — and then some — including her false imprisonment and battery.

In November, a six-person jury in Sarasota County unanimously found Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg liable for the incidents leading up to the January 2017 death of Beata Kowalski, 43. Jurors awarded the Kowalski family far more than they even requested — a total of $261 million in compensatory and punitive damages to make up for their loss and to punish the hospital.

With the juror issue now off the table, other new trial motions are left to be dealt with. Caroll said he hopes to have more answers to various outstanding motions by Jan. 22.

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