CIRCUIT COURT FOR BALTIMORE CITY, MARYLAND
BRADLEY W. SMITH, an individual, and )
RESCUE ONE FINANCIAL, LLC
)
)
Plaintiffs,
)
)
vs.
)
)
BRYAN LEVIN,
)
)
Defendant.
)

Case No. 24-C-15-004789

MEMORANDUM OF MYVESTA FOUNDATION
AS AMICUS CURIAE
SUPPORTING MOTION TO VACATE FRAUDULENT CONSENT ORDER
The plaintiffs in this case have moved the Court to vacate the “Consent Order” on the ground
that the order was procured pursuant to various “irregularities” and also urge the Court to dismiss
the lawsuit with prejudice. The better term for what happened here was that the Court was
defrauded, perhaps criminally so. Myvesta Foundation is the company that operates the “Get Out
of Debt Guy” web site at http://www.getoutofdebt.org, a web site devoted to informing consumers
about the merits and demerits of companies (such as Rescue One Financial) that purportedly help
consumers who incur heavy debt burdens. Myvesta was the intended victim of the fraud, although
it was never identified in the original lawsuit or motion to vacate. Myvesta now appears as amicus
curiae to support the motion to vacate for reasons additional to those given in the motion.
Myvesta urges the Court to take notice of two separate patterns of wrongdoing that this case
has in common with many other fraudulent lawsuits, filed both in Maryland and throughout the
United States. As we explain below, courts across the country have been subjected to fraudulent
misuse of the courts to obtain improper prior restraints against fully protected free speech and, as
more fully explained below, to suppress perfectly legal, albeit critical, speech by having it

 “deindexed” from Internet search engines, thereby rendering it effectively invisible. In light of this
information, the Court may wish to consider whether to inquire into the degree of responsibility both
of the plaintiffs in this action and of the lawyer, Bennett Wills, who originally filed this lawsuit (and,
we believe, at least two others) bearing the signatures of fake defendants. In addition, amicus urges
the Court to institute procedures to inhibit future frauds of this sort from being perpetrated.
Factual Background
The complaint in this case, filed on September 18, 2015, alleges that an anonymous
comment, posted in September 2014 to some articles on the “Get Out of Debt” site, contains false
and defamatory content.1 The complaint prayed for a preliminary and permanent injunction
compelling the individual defendant, the fictional “Bryan Levin” who purportedly lived at 1427
South Charles Street in Baltimore, to “remove from the Internet all material pertaining to the
Plaintiffs,” and barring him from “posting or publishing any false or defamatory material . . .
regarding Plaintiffs.”
A few days after the complaint was filed, a document entitled “Consent Judgment (Md. Rule
2-612)” was submitted under cover of a letter from lawyer Bennett Wills, dated September 28, 2015,
representing that the parties had “reached an agreement in the matter” and that “the Defendant has
consented to judgment.” The order purported to reflect an agreement between plaintiffs Bradley
Smith and Rescue One Financial LLC and defendant “Bryan Levin” that certain statements in the
September 2014 comments were false and defamatory; that not only the comments but also the entire
1

The complaint alleged that the defamatory comments were attached to https://getoutof debt.
org/51374/is-rescue-one-financial-hiring-people-to-lie-to-google; https://getoutofdebt.org/85462/
rescue-one-financial-consumer-complaint-february-6-2015; https://getoutofdebt.org/tag/
rescue-one-financial; and https://getoutofdebt.org/62316/rescue-one-financial-still-sending-mailers
-loans.
-2-

 articles to which the comments were posted should be removed from the Internet; and that “all
negative statements, material and/or information pertaining to the plaintiffs” was to be removed from
the Internet as well as from any search engines. The consent judgment directed this removal by
“Defendant,” by “Defendant’s agents,” and by any “other person/entity assisting or enabling
Defendant’s publication of the below referenced Content.” The order defined such persons or
entities as “collectively Defendant’s Agents” and proceeded to spell out, in successive paragraphs,
what such other persons and entities were required to do with respect to removal. Paragraph 5
provided that, because “it is foreseeable that the above-referenced URL’s and/or Content” would
persist online, removal from search engines such as “Google, Yahoo! and Bing” was to be sought
as well.
Each of these documents was signed by Bennett Wills, purportedly acting as counsel for
plaintiff Bradley Smith and his company, Rescue One Financial LLC; the “consent judgment” also
bore the signature of “Bryan Levin.”
It is the general policy of Myvesta’s Get Out of Debt Guy site not to remove comments after
they are posted. Instead, as the site’s terms explain, its policy is to allow people who post comments,
but later regret having done so, to post an explanation and retraction; Myvesta believes that this
approach maintains a public record of what was said, shows the correction of factual error, and holds
defamers publicly accountable for their misdeeds. https://getoutofdebt.org/terms. However, the
order imposes relief that purports to require removal of not only the allegedly false comments, but
also the articles to which the comments were posted; it was also intended to induce Google and other
search engines to remove from their search results not just the allegedly defamatory anonymous
comments but the entire articles to which the comments were posted. When an online article is
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 “deindexed”—removed from the database against which search engine users run their search queries
—the article becomes, for all practical purposes, hidden from consumers who are not already regular
readers of the web site where the article has been published.
If the plaintiffs in this case had actually been able to identify the anonymous individual who
posted comments on Myvetsa’s blog, the commenter could easily have agreed with Bradley Smith
and Rescue One Financial LLC about the defamatory nature of the comments, and they could have
agreed about what compensation or other remedies the commenter could provide to plaintiffs for
defaming them. They could not, however, by private agreement, have compelled the removal of the
comments from the blog (much less the non-defamatory articles to which the comments were
posted), and they could not have put a judge’s imprimatur on the elimination of the web pages that
included those comments from search engine listings. Inasmuch as the order imposes injunctive
relief against speech without any adjudication that the speech is false or that it was published with
actual malice, it constitutes a constitutionally impermissible prior restraint. Metropolitan Opera
Ass’n v. HERE Local 100, 239 F.3d 172, 176-177 (2d Cir. 2001); Lothschuetz v. Carpenter, 898 F.2d
1200, 1208-09 (6th Cir. 1990) (concurring opinion on an issue joined by another of the three-judge
appellate panel). Moreover, federal law makes blog hosts such as Myvesta immune from relief
directed at content supplied by commenters on their web sites.

Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd. v.

Consumeraffairs.com, Inc., 591 F.3d 250, 254 (4th Cir. 2009). In the circumstances, it is apparent
that the only purpose for filing this action and securing the Court’s signature on the order was to
prejudice the ability of intervenor Myvesta Foundation to carry content of which Bradley Smith and
Rescue One Financial disapprove, and to communicate that content effectively to the public through
listing on search engines.
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 In that respect, Myvesta was the real defendant in this case, particularly given the implicit
admission on page 4 of plaintiffs’ Motion to Vacate that Bryan Levin either was “uninformed” about
the fact that he was named as a defendant, or was “possibly non-existent”—that is, is a fictional
person, a name invented to make up for the fact that plaintiffs had no idea who the real author of the
anonymous complaints was. The effort to achieve “deindexing” of the articles to which the
comments were appended was intended to interfere with Myvesta’s First Amendment right to
communicate its views and opinions about the plaintiffs to members of the public who use search
engines to obtain information about the plaintiffs. For example, consumers who have accumulated
a significant amount of debt, and who have received a solicitation to use plaintiffs’ services, might
use Internet search engines to check plaintiffs’ track record. Myvesta is entitled to communicate its
views to such consumers.
Even though Myvesta was the target of this lawsuit, plaintiffs did not give Myvesta
Foundation any notice that they were filing these papers or seeking relief to the detriment of Myvesta
Foundation. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment requires notice to those sought
to be enjoined so that they can have an opportunity to participate in a decision that will affect their
speech rights. Carroll v. President & Comm’rs of Princess Anne, 393 U.S. 175, 181 (1968).
Moreover, constitutional due process was violated when the Court entered an order harming
intervenor’s interests without intervenor having received any notice or opportunity to be heard in
opposition to the proposed order.
This case is but one in a series of lawsuits that were filed in the name of Bradley Smith
and/or Rescue One Financial purportedly complaining about comments made on blog posts on the
Myvesta “Get Out of Debt Guy” web site, but then not just seeking relief about the allegedly
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 defamatory comments themselves, but also seeking to hide the non-defamatory articles to which they
were appended from members of the public seeking information about the plaintiffs.
The first such case was brought by a law firm in the Florida Circuit Court for Broward
County, alleging that some unidentified individual had posted negative comments on articles on
Myvesta’s web site. The complaint in Rescue 1 Financial LLC v. John Doe, No. CACE-14-024286
(Florida Circuit Court of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit for Broward County) is available on the
public electronic docket in that court, and is attached to this brief. The theory of the complaint was
that John Doe had placed certain comments on articles on the getoutofdebt.org web site (that is,
Myvesta’s site, although Myvesta’s identity was not mentioned), and that these comments were false
and defamatory. The complaint acknowledged that neither the blog’s host nor search engines such
as Google could be sued over the hosted comments, but alleged that Google was unfairly serving as
the “public electronic microphone” for the comments, bringing the false comments to public
attention in that “Google electronically republishes the defamatory statements . . . every time a
Google.com user searches the plaintiff's name.” The complaint further alleged that, because the
comments had been posted anonymously, it was not possible to identify the poster of the comments;
consequently, the complaint sought leave to serve the anonymous defendant only by publication. And
the complaint justified personal jurisdiction in Florida on the ground that the web site could be
viewed in Florida and that it was possible that the anonymous commenter was from Broward
County, Florida. Myvesta was never notified that the lawsuit had been filed seeking an injunction
that would block public access through search engines to its non-defamatory articles about Rescue
One Financial. The complaint was verified, on information and belief, by Bradley Smith. The court
in that case allowed service to be effected by publication in a legal publication specific to Broward
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 County; thereafter, the court granted a default judgment as requested.
This case was the second such lawsuit filed in the name of Bradley Smith and Rescue One
Financial, seeking to obtain a supposed consent order that would secure the same relief as had been
sought in the Florida action — the “delisting” by search engines of articles that were not claimed to
be defamatory, based on allegations that comments to those articles contained defamatory material.
Myvesta’s understanding is that a new suit was undertaken because Google did not effect the
delisting in response to the Florida order. Levy Affidavit ¶ 4. Like the Florida action, this lawsuit
was filed by an attorney, Bennett Wills. The consent order was purportedly signed by the named
defendant, Bryan Levin. But Bryan Levin was a fictional defendant. Id. It follows that Bryan Levin
did not sign the consent order; rather, his signature was forged. Nor was Myvesta given any notice
of the action seeking to block public access to its non-defamatory articles about plaintiffs Smith and
Rescue One Financial LLC.
“Bradley Smith” filed a third lawsuit: Smith v. Garcia, Case No. CV 16-144 S, 2017 WL
412722 (D.R.I. Jan. 31, 2017). As in this case and as in Rescue 1 Financial v. Doe, the complaint
alleged that comments to articles on the Get Out of Debt Guy blog contained defamatory material,
but sought orders calling for search engines to delist the entire articles, none of which were claimed
to be defamatory. But unlike this case, the complaint in Smith v. Garcia was filed pro se. The
complaint was purportedly signed by Bradley Smith, and was accompanied by a motion for entry of
a consent order that was signed both by Smith and by the purported defendant, Deborah Garcia.
Deborah Garcia was a fictional defendant; her signature was forged on the consent order papers;
Smith’s signature was also forged onto the complaint. Discovery in that case eventually revealed
that Bradley Smith’ s company Rescue One had hired reputation manager Richart Ruddie to help
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 “clean up” its reputation, and that the Rhode Island forgery was effected by Ruddie in furtherance
of the “reputation clean-up” services for which he had been hired. And as in this case, no notice was
given to Myvesta that a court order was being sought that would impede access by members of the
public to its fair criticisms of Smith and his company.
In courts across the country, a large number of “fake cases” like this one have been filed for
the purpose of suppressing articles that criticize various individuals and companies, without having
to present any evidence of either falsity or the mental state required to establish defamation liability
(actual malice for public figures and negligence for other plaintiffs). Volokh and Levy, Dozens of
Suspicious Court Cases, with Missing Defendants, Aim at Getting Web Pages Taken Down or
Deindexed, published simultaneously at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy
/wp/2016/10/10/dozens-of-suspicious-court-cases-with-missing-defendants-aim-atgetting-web-pages-taken-down-or-deindexed/ and http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2016/10/
dozens-of-suspicious-court-cases-with-missing-defendants-aim-at-getting-web-pagestaken-down-or-dein.html.
Myvesta learned indirectly of the federal court order that was entered against its interests in
Smith v. Garcia. It moved for leave to intervene in the action as a defendant, and it moved the
federal court to vacate the fraudulently entered consent order. In addition, because Rhode Island has
an anti-SLAPP statute, Myvesta moved to dismiss the lawsuit under the anti-SLAPP law. Chief
Judge Smith granted all three motions, and set a schedule for briefing of the issue of Myvesta’s
claims for monetary relief under the anti-SLAPP law. At the same time, Chief Judge Smith asked
the United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island to investigate whether the submission of
fraudulent papers implicated any federal criminal statutes. It is Myvesta’s understanding that the
-8-

 existence of that investigation was one of the factors that induced Richart Ruddie, the individual
reputation manager who was apparently responsible for the filing of this action as well as Smith v.
Garcia and Rescue 1 Financial v. Doe, to enter the Settlement Agreement that was submitted with
the motion to vacate.2
ARGUMENT
As the intended victim of the fraud that was perpetrated on the Court through the filing of
this action, Myvesta strongly endorses the relief sought by plaintiffs’ motion. Certainly the order
calling for the delisting from search engines of articles that Myvesta published about the plaintiffs,
whose veracity and First-Amendment-protected status has never been challenged, ought to be
vacated forthwith. Myvesta takes no position on whether plaintiffs have sound libel claims against
the unknown persons who posted the challenged comments to Myvesta’s articles about the plaintiffs.
Considering that plaintiffs now admit that they have no idea who posted those comments, and thus
no reason to believe that the poster or posters are located in Baltimore or, indeed, anywhere in the
state of Maryland, the complaint should be dismissed if for no other reason than lack of personal
jurisdiction over the anonymous commenter(s). In addition, considering that filing of this case
constituted fraud from the outset, dismissal with prejudice is a fitting remedy.
Where Myvesta parts company with plaintiffs’ motion is that plaintiffs have given the Court
no reason to credit several self-serving statements seeking to absolve plaintiffs and their former
counsel, Bennett Wills, from any responsibility for the fraud that was perpetrated on the Court.

2

Myvesta has been asked to avoid public disclosure of several of the facts of which it is
aware, to avoid prejudicing the federal criminal investigation. This brief has been crafted with that
stricture in mind. If the Court desires a more detailed statement of facts, Myvesta asks that it be
allowed to submit a more detailed factual account under seal.
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 These statements are made without any evidentiary support, and as we explain below, there is
significant reason to doubt the veracity of these representations. Therefore, in granting the motion
to vacate, as Myvesta hopes the Court will do, Myvesta urges the Court not to recite these selfserving representations on the assumption that they are true.
To the contrary, to the extent that the Court deems it important to protect the dignity of its
own proceedings (as Chief Judge Smith has done in Rhode Island by soliciting the involvement of
the United States Attorney), Myvesta urges the Court to consider whether to impose its own
sanctions on those responsible for the fraud on this court, whether to refer the case to state or federal
prosecutors in Maryland for investigation, and whether to ask professional licensing authorities to
investigate the propriety of professional discipline of the lawyer who signed the complaint and
proposed consent order accompanied by a forged signature.
A.

There Are Indications That Plaintiffs and/or Attorney Bennett Wills Knew What
Richart Ruddie Was Doing.
There is good reason to believe that plaintiffs Bradley Smith and Rescue One Financial knew

or should have known that Richart Ruddie was using fraudulent means to “clean up” their
reputations by concealing truthful criticisms and fair expressions of opinion from consumers whose
only access to that information was through searches using search engines, and therefore that some
of the unsworn representations to the contrary in their moving papers may be inaccurate.
The first such indication is the papers filed in the Florida Circuit Court for Broward County
in Rescue 1 Financial v. Doe. As the papers reflect, that complaint was filed on December 26, 2014,
and Myvesta has previously been informed both by Ruddie’s own counsel and by a California lawyer
representing Rescue One Financial that it was Ruddie who arranged for the filing of the case. Levy

-10-

 Affidavit ¶ 3. That is one reason why Rescue 1 Financial v.Doe is listed in the Settlement Agreement
in Smith v. Garcia (submitted as an attachment to plaintiffs’ motion) as one of the orders in the “fake
lawsuits” procured for plaintiffs by Richart Ruddie for the purpose of getting Myvesta’s criticisms
of plaintiffs delisted from search engines that Ruddie (with the cooperation of plaintiffs) is required
to get vacated. Yet plaintiffs claim at page 4 of their motion that they did not secure Ruddie’s
services until April 2015. That representation cannot be correct.
Moreover, the complaint in Rescue 1 Financial v. Doe alleged that, because the comments
had been posted anonymously, it was not possible to identify the commenter(s); the complaint further
alleged that the commenters might be located in Broward County. These were the excuses given for
serving by publication in an obscure Broward County publication, and for obtaining a default
judgment. Not only did the complaint make these allegations, but plaintiff Bradley Smith verified,
under oath, that he believed these facts to be true. But then, as soon as they learned that Google was
unwilling to effect the delisting that the company had hired Ruddie to secure for them, plaintiffs
represented that they just believed the accuracy of the completely contradictory allegations of this
complaint — that Ruddie had managed to identify anonymous commenters who happened to be in
Baltimore, where the complaint was filed.
What’s more, plaintiffs were keeping close enough track of what Ruddie was doing on their
behalf that, two months after Ruddie secured the entry of the phony consent order in this case, they
entered a contract with one of Ruddie’s firms, RIR1984 LLC, dated November, 2015 (again, not
April 2015, the date set forth in the moving papers), that referred to the delisting that had been
accomplished in this case. (A copy is attached). The contract, which called for Ruddie to be paid
$6000 per month for at least nine months, recited that Ruddie would monitor the Internet for future
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 “negative listings” that would be removed “just as we removed the previous Steve Rhodes articles”
(Steve Rhode is Myvesta’s principal). And yet, when the existence of this case first came to light,
the lawyer who was at the time representing Bradley Smith vis-à-vis Myvesta’s litigation in the
Rhode Island federal court, represented that Smith had never signed any retainer agreement with
Bennett Wills, the lawyer whom Ruddie had obtained to file this case.
Turning now to attorney Bennett Wills, the representation previously received from Smith’s
lawyer (Robby Birnbaum, whose name is mentioned in the moving papers) that Smith had never
signed a retainer agreement authorizing Wills to file a lawsuit in his name, raises questions about
what Wills knew about the case he was filing and whether he filed this lawsuit on proper authority.
In addition, it has come to Myvesta’s attention that Bennett Wills has filed two additional “fake
lawsuits” in Maryland circuit courts that are comparable to this case. Visionstar, Inc. v. Perez, No.
24C15005743 (Cir. Ct. Balt. City); Cohen v. Wilkerson, No. 06C15070022 (Cir. Ct. Carroll Cy).
(Copies of these two complaints are attached). The papers use very similar language, and an
investigation conducted by a private detective retained by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh to
assist in his investigation of the phenomenon of fake litigation established that, as in this case,
neither of the two individuals who were named as defendants and whose signatures appear on the
consent orders live at the addresses shown for them. See attached Declaration of Giles Miller.
Moreover, both cases show obvious signs of being fake: the signatures of defendants “Mark
Wilkerson” and “Daniel Perez” appear to have been written by the same hand; and the very carefully
handwritten signature of “Mark Wilkerson” spells his name as “Wilerkson.” And in the Visionstar
case, the allegation in paragraph 13 about the IP address from which the supposedly defamatory
reviews were posted to the Ripoff Report web site is a highly implausible. Generally speaking, a
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 subpoena can be issued in connection with a case seeking to identify the poster of an anonymous
comment, but that is something that happens after the complaint is filed, not something that can be
listed in the complaint. Undersigned counsel has contacted inside counsel for Xcentric Ventures, the
company that operates Ripoff Report, and ascertained that his client has never received any subpoena
to identify the anonymous author of the reports cited in the Visionstar complaint; that attorney also
represented that he checked the IP addresses for the reports cited in the complaint, and that none of
them was associated with the address 12.4.33.71 as the complaint alleges. Levy Affidavit ¶ 7.
Given the existence of reasons to doubt the innocence of plaintiffs and their original counsel,
Mr. Wills, in ruling on their motion to vacate the Court is urged not to simply credit the implausible
and unsworn assertions about their innocence, not backed by any evidence, that pervade the motion
to vacate.
B.

Because This Court Has Been Facing an Epidemic of Fraudulent Consent Orders, It
Should Institute Procedures Aimed at Preventing A Recurrence.
As bad as it is that Myvesta has been victimized by the filing of the fake consent decree in

this case, and that this Court as well as the Circuit Court for Carroll County have been the venues
where the fraud in this case as well as the frauds in Visionstar and Cohen were perpetrated through
the signature of Bennett Wills, phony proposed consent orders suppressing speech have been
submitted in several other cases that were filed on a pro se basis in this Court. Four such cases are
Patel v. Chan, No. 4C16003573 (Cir. Ct. Balt. City); Tanoto v. Brown, No. 24C16000901 (Cir. Ct.
Balt. City); Jones v. Conti, No. 24C15006945 (Cir. Ct. Balt. City); and Ruddie v. Kirschner, No.
24C15005620 (Cir. Ct. Balt. City). (Copies of the papers are attached).
The fake consent order that most directly concerns Myvesta is Jones v. Conti, because the

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 consent order affected it directly. The complaint was filed in the name of Brian Jones, pro se, against
a defendant, William Conti, who could not be located at the address listed on the proposed consent
order. Miller Declaration. (In the course of preparing the article on fake litigation that Professor
Volokh and undersigned counsel Paul Alan Levy published, Professor Volokh retained the services
of a private investigator, Giles Miller, to help determine whether the defendants identified as having
signed several apparently fake consent orders really existed.) Although the complaint alleges that
certain online articles defamed plaintiff Jones, a review of one of the articles cited in the consent
order, which appears on Myvesta’s own web site, https://getoutofdebt.org/62563/vantageacceptance-consumer-complaint- june-25-2014, shows that the article is about a California debt relief
company called “Vantage Acceptance” and that neither the article nor indeed any comment says
anything about Brian Jones. Yet a judge of this Court signed an order finding the article defamatory,
ordering its removal from the Internet, and calling for delisting from search engines.3
Ruddie v. Kirschner was filed pro se in the name of “R. Derek Ruddie,” although the name
below the signature line on the proposed consent order is Richart Ruddie, the perpetrator of the
judicial fraud in this case. The handwriting in that signature bears an astonishing resemblance to the
signatures of Daniel Perez and Mark Wilkerson, as can be seen by comparing Exhibits 3, 4, and 7.
The complaint and consent order papers are a lie from beginning to end. Private investigator Giles
Miller concluded that there was no “Jake Kirschner” at the address listed on the papers, see Miller
Declaration; moreover, a review of the online article that was the subject of the phony proposed
consent order reveals that it was posted on Ripoff Report about an Arizona lawyer named Daniel
3

The complaint also alleges that reports on the web sites of 800Notes.com and Ripoff Report
also defamed Brian Jones. Scrutiny of those two web sites shows that on those sites, as well, the
statements were about Vantage Acceptance and not about Brian Jones.
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 Warner, and says nothing about Ruddie. A copy of a screenshot of the original posting is appended
to the attached declaration of Chuck Rodrick. Undersigned counsel consulted with counsel for
Ripoff Report and confirmed that the original posting did not mention Ruddie; the original posting
can also befound on the Internet Archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20160523164930/http://
www.ripoffreport.com/r/DANIEL-WARNER-KELLY-WARNER-LAW//DANIEL-WARNERKELLY-WARNER-LAW-Daniel-R-Warner-Daniel-Warner-Lawyer-FROM-Kelly-Warner-Law
-1231611. Levy Affidavit ¶ 9.
Tanoto v. Brown was also filed pro se, but it appears that the clerk’s office noticed that
something was awry when its attempt to transmit documents by mail were met by a letter indicating
that nobody with the names in question was located at that address – thus the case was dismissed.
Patel v. Chan is the fake consent order case in this Court that has received a fair amount of
public attention. http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2016/08/georgia-dentist-mitul-patel-takes-phony
-litigation-scheme-to-new-extremes-as-a-way-of-suppressing-cr.html;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/24/georgia-dentist-claims
-libel-lawsuit-was-filed-without-his-knowledge-though-in-his-name/?utm_term=.ba19bfe529a6.
This purportedly pro se lawsuit was filed in the name of Mitul Patel, a Georgia dentist, over reviews
of his professional conduct posted on Yelp and certain other places by one of his patients, Matthew
Chan. The named defendant, however, was “Mathew Chan” (that is, Mathew with one “t”). The
filed complaint was accompanied by a “Consent Motion for Injunction and Final Judgment” that was
purportedly signed both by Patel and by “Mathew Chan” with an address in Baltimore that appears
to be an office building. (That is, the complaint alleged that it was a man in Baltimore who had
complained about services performed by a Georgia dentist; the complaint did not explain how the
-15-

 defendant had been identified). Barely a month later, the consent order was signed by Judge Philip
Senan Jackson. When the real Matthew Chan learned that this order had been entered against him,
he objected vigorously, and in response to the unfavorable public attention that Patel began
receiving, Patel represented publicly that he had not signed the pro se complaint. But Patel’s
Georgia counsel stated publicly that Patel had contracted for the services of Richart Ruddie to
provide reputation management services. Levy Affidavit ¶ 10 and Exhibit 9.

Moreover,

communication with Yelp’s counsel reveals that Patel himself tried to take advantage of the consent
order issued in the case by asking Yelp to honor the order by removing Chan’s review. Levy
Affidavit ¶ 10.
On September 7, 2016, Chan filed a motion to vacate the consent order entered against his
reviews; Patel retained Maryland counsel and on September 21, 2016 filed his own papers
supporting the vacating of the consent order that had been fraudulently obtained in his name; Patel
averred that he had never authorized the filing of the lawsuit in his name. On May 3, 2017, the court
denied the motion to vacate on the ground that Chan’s affidavit, which was “subscribed and sworn”
before a Georgia notary, had not been attested in the manner required by the Maryland rules, and
even though the court’s original “consent order” was issued despite the fact that there was no
affidavit supporting it. The denial also ignored the fact that the purported pro se plaintiff told the
Court that he had not submitted the pro se complaint. Consequently, despite the passage of eight
months since the judge who issued this order was informed that he had been hoodwinked, an invalid
prior restraint of constitutionally protected speech remains in place.
Amicus respectfully suggests to the Court that it should take precautions against having its
judges duped by fraudulent means into entering orders restraining constitutionally protected speech.
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 First, when cases like this are filed, the judges on the court should make sure there are real people
on both sides of the caption. Second, when injunctive relief is sought against online postings, even
by consent, the judge should review the online posting to make sure that it has been honestly
described. Third, the judge should make sure that there is evidence to support the claims made about
the material, not just allegations. Fourth, if the online posting reveals that it is being hosted by a
third party that is not one of the parties to the litigation, the judge should ensure that that third party
is properly subject to the court’s jurisdiction, and that the third party has been given notice and an
opportunity to respond. The Court might consider forming a pro bono panel of lawyers who are
familiar with litigation of online matters to provide advice to judges confronted with ex parte or
“consent”motions. And finally, when the court learns that is had been defrauded, it should act
promptly to vacate the “consent order,” not to speak of considering whether it is appropriate to refer
the matter to the appropriate prosecutorial and disciplinary authorities.
CONCLUSION
The motion to vacate the judgment should be granted forthwith.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Paul Alan Levy
Paul Alan Levy (pro hac vice sought)
Michael Kirkpatrick
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 20th Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-7725
plevy@citizen.org

/s/ David Rocah
David Rocah
-17-

 ACLU of Maryland
3600 Clipper Mill Rd., #350
Baltimore, Maryland 21211
(410)889-8550, ext. 111
rocah@aclu-md.org
Attorneys for Intervenor
May 11, 2017

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