Appeals court says no fine for Alan Dershowitz in failed Arizona voting machine case
- The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Alan Dershowitz will not have to pay sanctions related to a failed election lawsuit.
- The court ruled that although sanctions against Dershowitz were merited, there was no precedent for sanctioning a consulting attorney.
- The court upheld sanctions against two other lawyers in the case, Andrew Parker and Kurt Olsen, for making false claims.
Retired Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz won't have to pay sanctions in a failed federal election lawsuit brought to ban voting machines in Arizona.
But the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was hardly a victory for the legal team representing former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Sen. Mark Finchem, R-Prescott, in the lawsuit.
The three-judge panel held sanctions were rightfully imposed on lawyers in the case and reversed on Dershowitz only because of a lack of precedent — that no lawyer serving in a consulting, or "of counsel," role previously had been sanctioned.
The court found that consulting attorneys who are party to frivolous lawsuits in the future could be fined.
"We affirm the district court’s holding that of-counsel attorneys may be sanctioned," the court said in its March 14 opinion. "Because the court has not clearly articulated this rule before, we decline to give our holding retroactive effect."
The court dismissed Dershowitz’s argument that sanctions violated his First Amendment rights.
A U.S. District Court judge in 2023 ordered Dershowitz to pay $12,200 as part of a $122,000 fine imposed on two other lawyers for Lake and Finchem, who argued voting machines should not be used in Arizona's 2022 midterm election.
Judge John Tuchi described their lawsuit as a "frivolous" blend of conjecture and falsity that "never had a factual basis or legal theory that came anywhere close" to meeting the burden of proof needed for federal intervention in a state election.
Dershowitz, 86, said he played a limited role in the case and never met Lake or Finchem. He did not participate in the drafting of their complaint or investigate their claims, his attorneys argued in court documents.
Dershowitz said he wasn't party to any actual legal filings, a number of which used his old address in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and misidentified the name of his consulting firm, according to a motion filed in December 2022. He was listed third on legal filings under the designation "of counsel," which often refers to a lawyer who has a relationship with another lawyer or law firm without being a partner or employee.
The two key lawyers listed in the election case were longtime supporters of President Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully pushed election fraud claims after he lost the 2020 election.
Minnesota lawyer Andrew Parker represented MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell in a $1.3 billion defamation suit by Dominion Voting Machines over claims the company rigged the 2020 election.
Washington, D.C., lawyer Kurt Olsen sought to overturn the 2020 election in states that voted for Joe Biden. He also represented Lake in a separate lawsuit to toss out Maricopa County's 2022 election results, claiming without evidence that hundreds of thousands of illegal votes were processed on Election Day.
In a separate March 14 ruling, the 9th Circuit found sanctions against Parker and Olsen were justified.
"Lead attorneys made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions in their first amended complaint and motion for preliminary injunction and did not undertake a reasonable pre-filing inquiry,” the court said.