Four lawsuits from the same law firm challenging candidate petitions were voluntarily dismissed after opposing counsel pointed out a laundry list of false factual allegations later backed up by reports from Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
A challenge to Marlene Galan-Woods, candidate in Congressional District 1, was rescinded on April 19, and three lawsuits targeting petitions submitted by Tabatha LaVoie, a Republican candidate for Maricopa County Supervisor in District 3; Ralph Heap, Republican House candidate for Legislative District10; and Josh Barnett, Senate candidate in Legislative District 2were similarly walked back earlier in the week.
The four failed suits come as Snell and Wilmer piloted a new petition reviewsoftware, Veracity Petitions, LLC.
Opposing counsel in Galn-Woods’ case claimed the failure of the four suits showed the “abject failure” of the software’s test run.
Snell and Wilmer filed seven candidate challenges in total, with four voluntarily dismissed following failure to establish enough invalid signatures, two still pending and one voluntarily dismissed following a candidate’s withdrawal given past felonies.
Laddie Guy Shane, represented by Brett Johnson with Snell and Wilmer, challenged petitions submitted by LaVoie.
Johnson claimed LaVoie was 11 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot and alleged that at least 327 signatures were invalid due to legal deficiencies.
Kory Langhofer, attorney for LaVoie, claimed 140 of the allegations were provably false, and wrote in a letter to Johnson, “The upshot is that your case is grossly deficient and the evidence available to you before initiating the case (chiefly, the petition sheets and the voter file) does not even remotely justify the requested relief.”
The complaint claimed 103 signatures would be invalid due to the signer’s ineligibility to vote. But Langhofer found 77 of the 103, “an appalling 75%,” of those claims were baseless.
He further noted 73% of claimed voter name mismatches failed, two thirds of alleged illegible names and addresses were unfounded, and half of the voter alleged address mismatch claims showed no significant discrepancies.
“We understand that petition reviews are conducted in short time frames, and some degree of error is to be expected. But the number of manifest and avoidable errors in this case, and the inarguably materiality of those errors (approximately 13 times the dispositive margin of signatures), show that the Complaint never should have been filed,” Langhofer wrote.
He asked Johnson to dismiss the complaint. Johnson voluntarily dismissed the case with prejudice shortly after.
“The caselaw says that signatures on these petitions are the equivalent to a vote for constitutional protections,” Langhofer told the Arizona Capitol Times . “It seems like you should really do your research before electing that these signatures be thrown out.”
A similar sequence of events played out in a challenge to LD10 candidate Ralph Heap’s candidacy brought by Johnson.
Langhofer alleged the complaint against Heap contained 153 “objectively false” allegations of invalid signatures and found more than half of claims of mismatched voter registration names and addresses and unregistered voters were provably false.
He wrote in a letter pointing out the alleged failings that, “a lack of diligence and reasonable investigation pre-filing is further evidenced by facial inconsistencies” in the complaint. Johnson filed to voluntarily dismiss the suit an hour and a half later.
LD2 Senate candidate Josh Barnett similarly saw the challenge to his candidacy voluntarily dismissed, too, albeit on a narrower margin. Jeff Landay, an LD2 elector, represented by Johnson claimed at least 166 signatures were invalid. The county found 140 to be invalid, allowing Barnett to stay on the ballot.
The latest dismissal, a challenge to Galn-Woods’ candidacy flamed out over the weekend after a report from the county found she made the ballot by 587 signatures.
Her case is the fourth from Snell and Wilmer to be voluntarily dismissed after opposing counsel identified substantial factual failings in the initial complaints and saw reports from the county affirm each candidate still made the ballot.
In the complaint, Eric Spencer, attorney for Snell and Wilmer, claims 222 signatures did not match the county voter registration database, 117 were from individuals who were not eligible to vote, 240 were not registered to vote in CD1 and 446 were gathered by circulators with past felony convictions, among other alleged legal deficiencies.
In a letter, Andy Gaona, attorney for Galn-Woods, sparred with claims that three petition circulators were ineligible given past felony convictions, noting two are registered voters, and one circulator had her record sealed and her civil rights restored.”
Gaona noted he had “identified at least 139 problems with your clients’ objections separate and apart from the felon-circulator allegations,” including false allegations of non-registered, out of district or wrong party signers and illegible dates.
“Your clients raise a host of statutory defects to hundreds of other petition signatures, defects that were presumably identified through some sort of faulty review process because many are inexplicable,” Gaona wrote. “In short, there is no universe in which your clients’ claims can proceed. ...This longshot lawsuit should never have been filed, and we have serious questionsabout the diligence of the investigation that informed its filing.”
In response to Gaona, Spencer, the attorney for the plaintiff, wrote that he, “read (the) letter with amusement,” and called the “cherry-picked data ... laughable.”
He ends the letter by noting he had subpoenaed Galn-Woods as well. “My clients have no intent to dismiss their lawsuit,” Spencer wrote. “In fact they demand that Ms. Galn-Woods do the right thing and withdraw her candidacy in advance of Monday’s trial.”
But the day after, Spencer filed a notice of voluntary dismissal with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be brought again.
The dismissal came as a county report found of the 820 signatures challenged by Spencer, 449 were deemed valid.
But Spencer wrote to Gaona claiming he withdrew the claim as he found out allegations that Galan-Woods used “felons, including former prostitutes and distributers of drug paraphernalia, as well as individuals under active federal indictment on firearms charges” to collect signatures had been reported to the Attorney General’s office.
In response, Gaona said the “arguably defamatory” letter misrepresented the situation.
“(T)he facts show that you and your clients had, quite literally, no factual basis on which to make that allegation. Indeed, to counter that allegation, Ms. Galan-Woods provided documents and declarations disproving each and every aspect of your clients’ baseless allegations.” Gaona wrote.
He noted Galan-Woods was still contemplating seeking fees “particularly because this entire case (along with others brought by your firm) was predicated on the abject failure of Veracity Petitions’ software platform.”
According to corporation commission records, Lisa Coulter, general counsel and chief legal officer of Snell & Wilmer, created Veracity Petitions, LLC, and listed the law firm as the address and principal of the company in early March.
Gaona said Galan-Woods would not seek fees given a written apology, to which Spencer obliged, though with the caveat that the challenge was brought “in good faith and with valid reasons.”
Joe Wolf, campaign manager for Galan-Woods, confirmed they would not be seeking attorneys’ fees.
In a statement, he said, “The plaintiffs and their lawyer filed a meritless claim but couldn’t even come up with a meaningful apology. However, we will take their half-hearted apology as a concession that this case should never have been brought.”
A remaining challenge by Spencer to Republican Kim George’s candidacy in Congressional District 1 heads to trial on April 24, as does a suitby Johnson seeking to see corporation commission candidate Christy Kelly off the ballot.
Spencer and Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.
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