Judge Sanctions Defense Team $5K for Repeated Legal Citation Errors in Coomer v. Lindell Defamation Case

On Thursday, Judge Nina Wang of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado issued two sanctions orders in Coomer v. Lindell, a defamation case brought by plaintiff Eric Coomer against Frankspeech and its attorneys. The case, which alleged that Coomer used his position at Dominion Voting Systems to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results, resulted in a partial verdict in favor of the plaintiff, including punitive damages against Frankspeech.

The first sanctions order addressed improper legal citations in a pre-trial response brief. Defense counsel, including attorney Eric Kachouroff and co-counsel Jennifer DeMaster, filed a brief containing "nearly thirty defective citations." During a pretrial conference, Kachouroff admitted to using artificial intelligence (AI) in drafting the brief and delegating citation checks to DeMaster. The court concluded that sanctions were warranted to deter and punish the misconduct, imposing a $3,000 sanction on Kachouroff and his law firm, as well as a $3,000 sanction on DeMaster. The court declined to extend sanctions to the defendants themselves.

Second Sanctions Order After Trial

Following the trial and the court's first sanctions order, the parties submitted post-trial motions. Plaintiff moved to increase the punitive damages award against Frankspeech under Colorado law. In its response brief, Frankspeech argued that such an award would violate the Reexamination Clause of the Seventh Amendment, citing Capital Solutions, LLC v. Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA, Inc. as precedent. The court found that the citation was defective for two reasons:

• The case is a district court decision, not a Tenth Circuit ruling, as Frankspeech incorrectly claimed.
• Capital Solutions does not support the proposition that a jury’s determination of punitive damages is "entitled to finality" under the Reexamination Clause.

The court noted that a reasonable review should have identified these errors, particularly given that defense counsel had already been sanctioned for "this exact type of error." The court then ordered Kachouroff, DeMaster, and Frankspeech to show cause why they should not be sanctioned again under Rule 11.

Defense Counsel Admits to Errors

In response, Kachouroff conceded that he made a "real error" in misrepresenting Capital Solutions as a Tenth Circuit decision and misstating its holding. While he could not explain the error, he argued that Capital Solutions’s discussion of Tenth Circuit precedent was relevant. He claimed that the brief was cite-checked and that AI was only used for legal research via Westlaw. Kachouroff further asserted that the error was minor and that sanctions were unwarranted.