Among other things, the court reasoned, "though the court said that its decision was not influenced by its conjecture that Wood's conduct had precipitated the traumatic events of January 6, its willingness to pin that on Wood without any evidence or giving Wood an opportunity to respond is indicative of an unfair process." Here's the bulk of today's order:
In July 2020, Carter Page filed a defamation action in the Superior Court against Oath, Inc., alleging that certain of Oath's subsidiaries had published articles falsely accusing him of colluding with Russian agents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Shortly after that, Page's Delaware counsel moved … for the admission pro hac vice of L. Lin Wood, a lawyer licensed to practice in Georgia, so that he could appear as Page's attorney in Page's defamation action. The court granted the motion….
[On December 18, 2020], the Superior Court sua sponte issued a Rule to Show Cause directing Wood to show why his admission pro hac vice should not be revoked. According to the Rule, "[i]t appear[ed] to the Court that, since the granting of Mr. Wood's [pro hac vice] motion, he ha[d] engaged in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, had it occurred in Delaware, would violate the Delaware Lawyers' Rules of Professional Conduct…."
The Rule identified specific concerns regarding Wood's conduct in litigation in Georgia and Wisconsin related to the recent 2020 presidential election on November 3, 2020. Specifically, the court pointed to several pleading irregularities in an action filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. As far as we can tell, the pleadings in that case were not signed by Wood but named him as an "attorney to be noticed."
The court also referred to a complaint of questionable merit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, in which, the court suspected, "Wood filed or caused to be filed [an expert affidavit] …[,] which contained materially false information…." In the Georgia case, Wood was the named plaintiff and was represented by counsel.
