Finally!
After weeks of plastering the federal docket with garbage lawsuits, a trial judge in Delaware became so alarmed at attorney Lin Wood’s antics that he issued a show cause order sua sponte demanding to know why he should not revoke Wood’s pro hac vice admission to appear before the court.
As first reported by Law & Crime’s Adam Klasfield, Wood’s representation of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in a suit claiming defamation by Yahoo! News and Huffpost has hit a snag. Page represented himself in a federal suit against the news outlet’s parent company Oath, Inc., but U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield failed to find the alleged violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act and tossed that suit in 2018. So Page retained Wood for a plain vanilla defamation suit in the Superior Court for the State of Delaware, and the attorney’s PHV application was approved in August.
But Page is not Wood’s only client. Since the election, Wood has put his name on Sidney Powell’s Wisconsin “Kraken” suit, in addition to filing challenges to Georgia’s presidential and senatorial elections on his own behalf.
“It appears to the Court that, since the granting of Mr. Wood’s motion he, has engaged in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, had it occurred in Delaware, would violate the Delaware Lawyers’ Rules of Professional Conduct (“DRPC”),” wrote Judge Craig A. Karsnitz, before going on to detail a litany of screwups.
Among the failures in the Wisconsin Kraken advocacy, Judge Karsnitz specifically cited: adding a plaintiff without his knowledge or consent; claiming to have filed papers under seal when this was not the case; requesting a TRO without the required supporting affidavit; failure to certify that adverse parties had received notification; improperly pleading for expeditious injunctive relief; and including a fabricated quote from a supporting case cite in a pleading. None of which suggests scrupulous attention to procedure in a jurisdiction in which he was extended the courtesy of being allowed to practice.
And in Georgia, where Mr. Wood is a member of the bar, his own suit to stop Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from certifying the election results was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg, who described the claim as having “no basis in fact or law.” Judge Karsnitz suggests that this might violate DRPC Rule 3.1, which bars lawyers from filing suit “unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so.”
Judge Karsnitz was also deeply unimpressed with the infamous “Ramsland Affidavit” regarding purported electoral fraud in Michigan, which Wood (inexplicably) filed in his Georgia suit. Noting that the document “contained materially false information, misidentifying the counties as to which claimed fraudulent voting information occurred,” the court wondered if its submission as evidence ran afoul of multiple DRPC rules mandating candor before the tribunal.
Presumably the Delaware court had not seen Wood’s latest federal challenge to the rules of the upcoming Georgia senate runoffs, in which he guaranteed “plenty of perjury” when he drafted this show cause order.
Mr. Wood has until January 6 to explain to the court why he should be permitted to remain on Carter Page’s case.
Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on a call with reporters that she will be investigating “what we believe to be an intentional misrepresentation” by Sidney Powell in her Michigan Kraken litigation.
“I think we need to go back to a time where you can trust an attorney is making an accurate and truthful representation to the court, because if they don’t, then they won’t be able to practice law anymore,” Nessel said, according to Forbes.
Lawyers for the City of Detroit have reportedly given Powell 21-day notice of their intention to ask the court for Rule 11 sanctions for her conduct in the Michigan suit, so Powell may be facing challenges on multiple fronts in the Great Lakes State.
Later Nessel’s spokesman Ryan Jarvi added, “Professional litigators should know better than to waste the court’s time with baseless arguments designed to mislead the public, and we will consider filing grievances against those who violated the rules of professional conduct all attorneys swear to abide by.”
Godspeed, Michiganders and Muskrats. It’s time to clean this sh*t up.
Judge Says Lin Wood’s Post-Election Lawsuits May Have Violated Several Professional Rules, Orders Him to Respond [Law & Crime]
Michigan Attorney General Weighing Professional Sanctions Against Sidney Powell, Pro-Trump Lawyers [Forbes]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
