I was unfamilar with this case, but a couple lawyers in Colorado filed a federal lawsuit back in December and now may face dicipliinary action. The lawyers names’ are Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker. The lawsuit was on behalf of 160 million voters and against Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook, its founder Mark Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan and elected officials in four states. They were asking for $160 billion in damages.
The suit was dismissed back in April and now the lawyers may face dicipline for filing a frivolous lawsuit. They had zero evidence; just a good-faith belief that the election was stolen.
The court system does not work on good faith belief alone. You need at least some actual evidence. Otherwise the court system could be overloaded with baseless cases.
Unless and until punishments of consequence are handed down, this will continue and this will escalate.
A court ruling of “Tsk tsk, you should know better!” doesn’t mean jack shit when “knowing better” is superseded by “knowing what you can get away with in the real world”.
If you mean the case in the OP, it was on behalf of 160 million voters. I wonder who these 160 million voters were. I’m a voter and I certainly was not asked nor did I agree to join this suit. I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not alone in this.
That’s just the way class-action lawsuits work. If the lawsuit succeeds you would be given a chance to opt-out of the settlement or passively accept the settlement and give up your ability to sue for the same thing in future.
Update: Judge has ruled that these two lawyers have to pay the legal costs of the defendants. Those defendants comprise 18 individuals and companies. How much the total bill will be has yet to be determined. They’re going to appeal, of course.
As I mentioned in a thread in The Pit, two of the companies named in the lawsuit were Facebook and Dominion. Additionally Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan were named as parties being sued as well. I find myself smiling at this since I’m quite certain the lawyers hired by these companies and people are really expensive. I won’t be at all disappointed if these two idiots end up bankrupted paying the legal fees for these attorneys.
They’ll set up a GoFundMe or a Patreon and their supporters will flood them with untraceable funds. Charles Koch alone has a lot of money and a lot of shells to funnel it through.
Unfortunately the judge explicitly specified that the legal fees allowed would reflect standard rates for Colorado, so just because Zuckerberg decided to hire super expensive lawyers doesn’t mean the other side has to pay for them.
The Court will note that the “reasonable”fees for commercial litigators vary wildly across the country.While hourly rates in excess of $1,000 per hour for an experienced litigator may be the going rate in some locations on the coasts, it is not the case in Colorado.The Court will be looking to the Colorado Bar Association Economics of Law Practice Surveyfor guidance on the reasonableness of the rates requested.
The question I have, is if they appeal the decision and lose do they also have to pay the additional attorney fees incurred by the defendant as part of the appeal? If I were them, I’d cut my losses. (Actually if I were them I would probably voluntarily commit myself to the nearest mental institution for psychiatric treatment but that’s not being discussed here).
