The loss triggers remedies, including an injunction preventing additional sales of stolen goods and refunding every customer who bought them. Feldman’s client must also turn over any stolen goods in their remaining inventory and disgorge profits. Other damages may be owed, along with interest. Ars could not immediately reach an attorney for the plaintiffs to discuss the sanctions order or resulting remedies.
Failla emphasized in her order that Feldman appeared to not appreciate “the gravity of the situation,” repeatedly submitting filings with fake citations even after he had been warned that sanctions could be ordered.
That was a choice, Failla said, noting that Feldman’s mistakes were caught early by a lawyer working for another defendant in the case, Joel MacMull, who urged Feldman to promptly notify the court. The whole debacle would have ended in June 2025, MacMull suggested at the hearing.
Rather than take MacMull’s advice, however, Feldman delayed notifying the court, irking the judge. He testified during the heated sanctions hearing that the delay was due to an effort he quietly undertook, working to correct the filing. He supposedly planned to submit those corrections when he alerted the court to the errors.
But Failla noted that he never submitted corrections, insisting instead that Feldman kept her “in the dark.”
“There’s no real reason why you should have kept this from me,” the judge said.
The court learned of the fake citations only after MacMull notified the judge by sharing emails of his attempts to get Feldman to act urgently. Those emails showed Feldman scolding MacMull for unprofessional conduct after MacMull refused to check Feldman’s citations for him, which Failla noted at the hearing was absolutely not MacMull’s responsibility.
Feldman told Failla that he also thought it was unprofessional for MacMull to share their correspondence, but Failla said the emails were “illuminative.”
At the hearing, MacMull asked if the court would allow him to seek payment of his fees, since he believes “there has been a multiplication of proceedings here that would have been entirely unnecessary if Mr. Feldman had done what I asked him to do that Sunday night in June.”
Source: arstechnica.com
