The defeat activates relief measures, including an injunction stopping further sales of the misappropriated items and refunds to every purchaser. Feldman’s client must also hand over any stolen goods remaining in inventory and surrender the profits. Additional damages and interest may be assessed. Ars was unable to immediately reach an attorney for the plaintiffs to discuss the sanctions order or the remedies that follow.
Failla stressed in her order that Feldman appeared not to appreciate “the gravity of the situation,” repeatedly filing documents with fraudulent citations even after being warned that sanctions could follow.
Failla said it was a choice, noting that a lawyer for another defendant, Joel MacMull, discovered Feldman’s errors early and urged him to notify the court promptly. MacMull told the hearing the entire fiasco could have been resolved in June 2025.
Instead of following MacMull’s advice, Feldman delayed informing the court, aggravating the judge. He testified at the heated sanctions hearing that he postponed because he was quietly trying to correct the filing and planned to submit those corrections when he informed the court of the mistakes.
Failla observed that no corrections were ever filed, insisting that Feldman had kept her “in the dark.”
“There’s no real reason why you should have kept this from me,” the judge said.
The court only learned of the bogus citations after MacMull alerted the judge by producing emails documenting his efforts to get Feldman to act urgently. Those emails showed Feldman chastising MacMull for unprofessional conduct after MacMull declined to verify Feldman’s citations — a task Failla said at the hearing was decidedly not MacMull’s responsibility.
Feldman told Failla he also found MacMull’s sharing of their correspondence unprofessional, but Failla described the emails as “illuminative.”
At the hearing, MacMull asked whether the court would permit him to seek payment of his fees, arguing “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.”
