Judge Sanctions MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell For Wasting The Court’s Time

Legal Issues

from the being-stupid-in-public-can-be-costly dept

Mike Lindell just used to be a guy selling overpriced pillows to people who liked to buy overpriced pillows. But when Donald Trump was elected, he threw his entire company under the Trump campaign bus, making it clear Lindell was willing to ride The Donald’s coat tails into relevance. What used to be just a pillow manufacturer was now The Preferred Pillow of the Far Right^TM, a social cause tied to sleep — the ultimate form of slacktivism.

When Americans unsurprisingly decided to dump an inveterate liar who proved incapable of handling a pandemic, Lindell sprung into action. As persona grata of the Trump campaign, Lindell was asked to provide his nonexistent legal expertise about the 2020 election. He agreed with Trump — another person who had no evidence of election fraud — that the election was fraudulent.

Thanks to his online and TV appearance agitation, Lindell was sued by a frequent target of his election-related bullshit, Smartmatic, a manufacturer of voting machines/software. In response, Lindell filed his own lawsuit, ridiculously claiming that voting machine manufacturers’ lawsuits unfairly targeted his company (which had allegedly not issued any formal statements about the election results), resulting in the violation of his company’s free speech rights to say what it wanted to about the election, even if (as Lindell swore on the record) MyPillow had not actually expressed any opinion about the 2020 election.

Moving on from there, Lindell continued to assert his obliviousness when being sued by other voting machine companies that found themselves besmirched on the regular by Lindell and others who swore (literally in court filings) that Joe Biden’s win was fraudulent.

Live in fiction if you must, says a federal court. But don’t expect us to foot the bill for your bullshit lawsuits. Lindell is now being hit with sanction orders for allowing his masturbatory election fantasies to become half-assed realities by filing a federal lawsuit.

Here’s Caroline Vakil of The Hill reporting on the latest in one of Mike Lindell’s many litigious flights of folly.

A U.S. district judge ordered MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to pay some of voting machine company Smartmatic’s court costs and fees, saying in a ruling on Thursday that some of Lindell’s claims against Smartmatic fall “on the frivolous side of the line.”

“The Court agrees with Smartmatic that Lindell has asserted at least some groundless claims,” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols wrote in his ruling. 

“In particular, the Court concludes that at the very least Lindell’s claim against Smartmatic under the Support or Advocacy Clause falls on the frivolous side of the line (other claims do too). As a result, the Court orders Lindell and his previous counsel to pay some of the fees and costs Smartmatic has incurred defending itself and moving for sanctions,” he added.

That’s how it’s going to go for Lindell. The best option he has right now is to abandon any open litigation against voting machine manufacturers. His pride and his conspiracy buy-in likely won’t allow him to ditch these lawsuits. So, it’s going to cost him plenty of real money, something that’s going to harm his business (which appears now to be solely reliant on right-wing purchasers of pillows) in the long run.

The opinion [PDF] makes it clear Lindell is wasting public resources, something the court is unwilling to allow.

There is no abuse of process, says the court, noting that litigants filing lawsuits are obligated to serve defendants, even if the end result is a loss in court for those instigating the litigation.

As for Lindell’s post-facto RICO claims, the court says nothing here is the RICO:

Lindell’s RICO claim against Smartmatic fails because he fails to allege that Smartmatic shared the requisite common purpose with Dominion or other members of the alleged RICO enterprise. Lindell claims that Smartmatic and Dominion acted in furtherance of the purpose of “suppressing speech and dissent” and “suppressing demands for investigations” about electronic voting machines and their use in the 2020 election. Lindell’s Counterclaims ¶ 156. He also claims that Smartmatic and Dominion shared “a common purpose of suppressing dissent to protect their commercial and financial interests shown by their coordinated attack on dissenting speech, which is akin to a price fixing scheme.” Id. But Lindell alleges no fact raising an inference that Smartmatic worked with Dominion (or anyone else for that matter) “to pursue by common, coordinated efforts what they could not do on their own.” Browning v. Flexsteel Indus., Inc., 955 F. Supp. 2d 900, 913 (N.D. Ind. 2013). He also does not allege that Smartmatic communicated, met, or otherwise coordinated with Dominion or Hamilton Place in furtherance of their supposed “suppressive” aims. In short, Lindell offers no allegations from which to infer a “continuing unit that functions with a common purpose.” Boyle, 556 U.S. at 948; Cisneros v. Petland, Inc., 972 F.3d 1204, 1213 (11th Cir. 2020) (“[Lindell has] failed to allege concrete facts from which the inference may plausibly be drawn that [Smartmatic] shared a common purpose to [engage in suppressive and otherwise illegal conduct] with the other participants of the purported associationin-fact enterprise.”).

Litigants — especially those who proceed without legal representation — may legitimately misunderstand the law and proceed into areas unsupported by precedent. Lindell, however, does not have that excuse. He’s not filing pro se lawsuits. He’s being represented by the best lawyers money can buy and yet he still insists on pursuing baseless legal claims. That’s going to hurt him, hopefully personally.

All of Lindell’s claims (which range from the aforementioned RICO to the First Amendment to the Fourteenth Amendment) have failed. And Lindell was on notice these would fail, considering the absolute absence of precedent backing his views. Given these facts, the court says Lindell should be sanctioned for engaging in bad faith, politically motivated litigation.

Lindell now owes Smartmatic money for dragging the company into his baseless “the election was stolen” lawsuit.

The Court agrees with Smartmatic that Lindell has asserted at least some groundless claims. See Sanction’s Mot. at 18 (contending that Lindell has asserted groundless “factual allegations, accusations of criminality, theories of liability within his existing claims, and causes of action . . . against Smartmatic”). In particular, the Court concludes that at the very least Lindell’s claim against Smartmatic under the Support or Advocacy Clause falls on the frivolous side of the line (other claims do too). As a result, the Court orders Lindell and his previous counsel to pay some of the fees and costs Smartmatic has incurred defending itself and moving for sanctions under Rule 11.

It’s unclear at this point how much this will cost Lindell and his pillow company. But there was a way to sell pillows and a way to steer clear of sanctions but Lindell has managed to screw up both efforts. There may be a small subset of Americans willing to buy pillows for political reasons, but Lindell’s decision to attach himself to the Trump Train is likely going to cost him far more in real dollars than can be made up by selling bedroom accessories to a small minority of US residents who think buying pillows is a political statement.

Filed Under: frivolous lawsuits, mike lindell, rico, rule 11, sanctions
Companies: mypillow, smartmatic