Law Firms
Pro se litigant and lawyer ordered to pay $1.5M for using Lewis Brisbois name
A federal judge in Houston has ordered a lawyer and a pro se litigant in a rental-fee and eviction dispute to pay $1.5 million for registering a Texas business using the name of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, the law firm representing their litigation opponent in the rental litigation. (Photo from Shutterstock)
Updated: A federal judge in Houston has ordered a lawyer and a pro se litigant in a rental-fee and eviction dispute to pay $1.5 million for registering a Texas business using the name of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, the law firm representing their litigation opponent in the rental litigation.
U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison of the Southern District of Texas ordered pro se litigant Michael Bitgood to pay $1 million and lawyer Susan C. Norman, who represented a second litigant in the rental dispute, to pay $500,000, Law360 reports. Another lawyer, Bradley B. Beers, was ordered to pay $10,000 for filing an assumed name certificate that registered the new entity with the Texas secretary of state’s office.
Bitgood and Norman filed documents to register a partnership and assume the Lewis Brisbois name after they saw an online notice reflecting that the firm’s registration for a foreign limited liability partnership in Texas had lapsed. After taking on the Lewis Brisbois name, Bitgood and Norman alleged that the Lewis Brisbois lawyer representing their opponent in the rental litigation no longer had the right to appear in a Texas court. The gambit worked.
Lewis Brisbois sued in September 2022 for alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition and fraud. Ellison issued a preliminary injunction in February 2023 that was upheld in an unpublished July 31 opinion by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans.
Ellison granted a motion for summary judgment Aug. 14, a permanent injunction Sept. 6 and assessed damages Sept. 13.
Ellison’s summary judgment opinion found for Lewis Brisbois on the trademark infringement and unfair competition claims. He also said Lewis Brisbois was entitled to attorney fees, which are allowed in Lanham Act trademark cases that are “exceptional.”
“If any Lanham Act case is exceptional, it is this one,” Ellison wrote. “Defendants have filed dozens of frivolous motions and delayed the proceedings for months.”
In a footnote, Ellison said the filing of frivolous motions was “most egregious” in Bitgood’s case because he had filed 65 motions and documents after being granted access to the PACER filing system.
“This court has had complex, multiyear class actions require far fewer filings than this straightforward infringement case,” Ellison wrote.
Norman and Beers did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s email and voicemail messages seeking comment.
Bitgood told the Journal in an email that, “No, I do not have $1 million laying around” to pay the judgment. He elaborated in a phone interview.
“Not only is it unfair, it’s outrageous,” Bitgood says of the damages order. Lewis Brisbois “didn’t suffer a penny’s worth of damages; they incurred no attorneys fees,” he says.
Bitgood says he sought to use the Lewis Brisbois name “for the heck of it,” but his quest turned out to be successful because he “whipped” Lewis Brisbois when he disqualified the firm in the rental dispute.
“I beat them fair and square in state court,” he says.
Bitgood says he told Ellison in an Oct. 6, 2022, hearing, which was less than a month into the trademark lawsuit, that he had no interest in fighting the trademark case and didn’t want to use the Lewis Brisbois name.
“Who wants a name like that with their reputation anyway?” Bitgood says.
Additional demands, however, for a reversal of the rental decision and indemnity led Bitgood, in his words, to tell Lewis Brisbois to, “Blow it out your a- -; there is no way I’m going to do all that.”
As for Ellison’s allegations that Bitgood filed frivolous motions, Bitgood says the judge should specify which motions he thought were frivolous and what law supported his conclusion. And he should have a hearing to refute the allegations, Bitgood says.
Because he indicated early on that he was willing to give up the name, Bitgood says, “What are we fighting about?”
Updated Sept. 17 at 3:37 p.m. to add comments from pro se litigant Michael Bitgood.
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