More Apparently Fraudulent Court Orders

Lumen fans will recall that Professor Eugene Volokh has been working with our database of court orders mandating content removal, primarily searching for examples of injunctions or other orders that are arguably fraudulent or falsified in some way.

Last fall we noted, courtesy of Professor Volokh, that the Texas Attorney General's office was suing a California company, Solvera Group Inc., for filing "reputation management" lawsuits that they knew to contain false information, with the company's ultimate objective being to secure court orders that could then be served on Google and other Internet entities, mandating the removal of criticisms of Solvera's customers. Solvera was involved in at least one of the cases mentioned in Professor Volokh's amicus brief in California Supreme Court case Hassell v. Bird, regarding the implications of asking third parties such as Google to honor injunctions in cases in which they were not a party.

Professor Volokh has continued to work with Lumen's database, and yesterday blogged about a new case, this time in Arizona, that features many similar details to the Solvera case. This time, the AZ state bar has filed a disciplinary complaint against three lawyers at law firm Kelly / Warner Law. One of the cases the AZ bar association's complaint mentions is Chinnock v. Ivanski, about which Professor Volokh has already blogged at greater length, and during his investigations of which Lumen research played a role. It's quite a saga, and the details of this and the other similar cases are worth a read.

The complaint alleges that the three lawyers repeatedly filed defamation complaints that they knew to contain fabricated individuals (defendants) and forged notarizations. You can read the entire complaint here, and also see Kelly /Warner's initial public response here.

As always, Lumen is gratified that it has been able to play a part in bringing this and other similar scenarios to light. One of Lumen's primary purposes is to facilitate research in the public good regarding requests to remove material from the Internet, and we look forward to hearing more about Professor Volokh's inquiries into this new issue, as well as digging into the challenges fraudulent orders will present for OSPs. Please email us if you’re interested in working with our data.