Last week an angry Florida judge invited the defendant in a copyright case to propose sanctions against the porn-trolling firm Prenda Law for misleading the court. The case pitted a porn producer called Sunlust Pictures against a Florida man named Tuan Nguyen. Yet the case was such a fiasco that by the time of last week's hearing, there were no lawyers left who were willing to represent the plaintiffs.

The defense says that the lawsuit was orchestrated by an Illinois law firm called Prenda Law. But Prenda can't practice law in Florida, so it needed to recruit a local attorney to represent its interests in the state. At last week's hearing, the Florida attorney Jonathan Torres told Judge Mary Scriven that he had been recruited for the job by Prenda but now wanted out of the case. Yet Prenda sent in a letter claiming it had nothing to do with the case. And John Steele, an Illinois attorney with ties to Prenda who was sitting in the audience near the plaintiff's table, told Judge Scriven that he wasn't involved in the case either. An incredulous Judge Scriven dismissed the case and asked the defense to propose punishments for Prenda's "lack of candor."

On Tuesday, defense attorney Graham Syfert took Judge Scriven up on her offer, submitting a motion for sanctions against Prenda Law, John Steele, and others affiliated with the ethically challenged law firm.

Syfert provided strong evidence that Steele was lying when he claimed not to be involved in the case. Prenda's letter denying involvement in the case was submitted by email as a PDF. Syfert examined the metadata for this PDF file and found the document had a "title" of "Steele Law Firm" and an "author" of "Kerry Eckenrode." Syfert says "Kerry Eckenrode" is the maiden name of Steele's wife, and "Steele Law Firm" is the name of Steele's current law practice. An obvious interpretation would be that Steele ghost-wrote the letter denying Prenda was involved in the case and had Prenda lawyer Paul Duffy sign it. And then a few days later he showed up at a hearing in that same case.

"It is common for John Steele to create documents and send e-mails with other attorney’s names to serve his own agenda, with or without their knowledge," Syfert told the court. We covered another case of alleged sock-puppetry by Steele on Wednesday.

Syfert also had ample evidence that Duffy (or whoever wrote the letter) was lying when he claimed not to be involved in the case. Duffy personally made courtroom appearances in at least three Sunlust lawsuits in Illinois. Even more damning, Prenda's own website has a page listing "a sample of individuals who chose to litigate the matter and are currently in court over their alleged infringement." That page has a link to the original complaint against Syfert's client before the Florida courts.

Syfert said that he would be filing a separate motion asking Sunlust pictures to cover the defense's legal costs, along with a "lodestar multiplier" to reflect the plaintiff's misconduct. He requested that Prenda, Steele, Duffy, and others associated with Prenda be on the hook for those costs.

Getting some answers

Syfert wasn't finished. Judge Scriven had also invited a motion for sanctions against Matthew Wasinger, a Florida attorney who had briefly acted as Prenda's local counsel before asking to be excused from the case. (He and Torres were two of at least four Florida lawyers who have tried to bow out of the case since August.) But Scriven hadn't yet excused him from the case, so he was obligated to attend the hearing. When he failed to do so, Scriven invited the defense to propose sanctions against him as well.

In another motion, also filed on Tuesday, Syfert estimated that monetary sanctions between $500 and $3400 would be an appropriate penalty for failing to show up in court. But he said he was more interested in getting information from Wasinger than cash. So he proposed that Wasinger be excused from paying a financial penalty if he agreed to answer a series of 14 questions about his relationship to Prenda, Steele, and Sunlust.

These questions focus on how Wasinger first got involved in the case, the extent of Wasinger's communications with Duffy and Steele, the details of his financial arrangement with Prenda and Sunlust, and whether his legal filings were being ghost-written by others. Syfert also wants to know how much contact Wasinger had with the nominal client, Sunlust Pictures, and whether Wasinger ever actually reviewed the evidence that supposedly proved the defendants were guilty of copyright infringement.

"By requiring answers to these questions, defendants counsel hopes that the responses serve as a warning to other potential 'local counsel' representatives of Prenda Law," Syfert wrote. He hoped that when Prenda tried to recruit new attorneys in the future, they would have "reasonable disclosure of the facts surrounding the cases that they are accepting and ability to adequately protect the interest of their clients." Presumably, once attorneys understand what they're getting into, most of them will run away screaming.

Update: I mistakenly suggested Steele flew from Illinois to Tampa, but I'm told that as a Miami resident he may not have needed to fly there.