Harris v. St. Peter Investors, LLC et al.

What the court wrote

Verbatim from the court's document (public domain). Ellipses mark omitted text; nothing is paraphrased.

that “Avidity’s agents acted on behalf of both Avidity and St. Peter Investors, establishing joint and vicarious liability.” ECF No. 1 at 4 (emphasis added). As a result, the Court believes that the “better approach to remedy this problem” is “to defer judgment against the defaulting party until the merits have been resolved.” Rankin v. Direct Recovery Servs., LLC, No. 21-cv-1560 (MJD/LIB), 2023 WL 3597724, at *2 (D. Minn. May 23, 2023) (citation omitted). II. Hallucinated Citations As a final matter, the Court notes that Harris repeatedly misquotes caselaw cited in his motion and provides completely hallucinated citations. For instance, he provides purported quotations from Pfannenstiel Architects, Inc. v. Chouteau Petroleum Co., 978 F.2d 430, 433 (8th Cir. 1992); Johnson v. Dayton Elec. Mfg. Co., 140 F.3d 781 (8th Cir. 1998); and Stephenson v. El-Batrawi, 524 F.3d 907 (8th Cir. 2008). See ECF No. 55 at 1– 2. Each case is real and concerns the subject matter contained within the purported quotation. But the specific quotations Harris provides are not found in any of those cases. Worse, Harris provides at least two citations—Taylor v. City of Minneapolis, 202 F. Supp. 3d 933, 941–42 (D. Minn. 2016) and Berg v. Copeland, 2019WL1493461, at *5 (D. Minn. Apr. 4, 2019)—which do not appear to exist at all. ... Rule 11 also authorizes the Court to impose an appropriate sanction “to deter repetition of the conduct or comparable conduct by others similarly situated.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(4); see also Vallejo v. Amgen, Inc., 903 F.3d 733, 747 (8th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted) (recognizing that district courts have “broad discretion in the choice of sanctions”). That includes the authority to strike pleadings entirely. Sanders v. United States, 176 Fed. Cl.

Authorities cited in the passage: Rankin v. Direct Recovery Servs · Inc. v. Chouteau Petroleum Co., 978 F · Johnson v. Dayton Elec. Mfg. Co., 140 F · Stephenson v. El-Batrawi, 524 F · Taylor v. City of Minneapolis, 202 F · Berg v. Copeland, 2019WL1493461, at *5 (D. Minn. Apr. 4, 2019) · Vallejo v. Amgen · Sanders v. United States, 176 Fed · Rule 11 · Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(4)