From Apelbaum v. Lambert, decided Friday by Judge Robert White (E.D. Mich.):
Yaacov Apelbaum and his cybersecurity firm, XRVision, Ltd. (Plaintiffs), commenced this diversity breach of contract and defamation action against attorney Stephanie Lynn Lambert [the case caption calls her Stefanie Lynn Lambert], her law office {collectively referred to as the Lambert Defendants}, and Bill Bachenberg, after the parties allegedly contracted for Plaintiffs to investigate potential fraud during the 2020 general election….
Following the 2020 election, the Lambert Defendants, with financial assistance and partial direction from Bachenberg, promoted various claims of election fraud, including through lawsuits challenging election results. Pursuant to these efforts, the Lambert Defendants pursued various election fraud investigations, and they hired Plaintiffs to conduct forensic analyses of election results and/or procedures in Michigan and Pennsylvania. As particularly relevant here, the parties in March 2022 "entered into an agreement for Plaintiffs to perform a forensic analysis of Fulton County, Pennsylvania's elections systems, in exchange for $200,000." The parties later expanded the scope of Plaintiffs' analysis "for an additional fee of $350,000."
Plaintiffs allegedly performed their obligations of this agreement, but after they found and reported no evidence of election fraud in June 2022, Defendants never paid them as agreed. Further, the Lambert Defendants also allegedly started a defamation campaign against Plaintiffs around August 2022 to dissuade the Pennsylvania Senate, among others, from doing business with Plaintiffs. According to Plaintiffs, they had at the time finalized negotiations with the Pennsylvania Senate to perform a forensic analysis of the whole state's election system, but Lambert Defendants' conduct caused the Pennsylvania Senate to terminate this relationship….
The court allowed plaintiffs' defamation claims against the Lambert defendants to go forward (because of Bachenberg's settlement agreement with the parties, the claims against Bachenberg weren't considered). The defamation allegations were basically this:
