I Supported Michigan’s New Anti-SLAPP Law. Then I Used It Against the Attorney Who Sued Me.

How Michigan’s new anti-SLAPP law, a judicial estoppel trap built from my opponent’s own filings, and a mandatory statutory stay changed everything about the case against me.

I Supported This Bill Because I Knew What SLAPP Suits Do to People

In 2025, Michigan was working toward adopting the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act. HB 4045 was the vehicle. The bill would give defendants in strategic lawsuits early dismissal mechanisms, mandatory fee-shifting against plaintiffs who filed meritless cases to silence protected speech, and an automatic stay of proceedings from the moment a special motion was filed. I was among the named supporters of that legislation. My name is in the Senate’s documentation of the proceedings.

I supported it because I cover courts. I cover judicial misconduct, prosecutorial ethics, institutional accountability. I have watched, case by case, what happens to people who publish something true about a powerful institution and then face a lawsuit not because they were wrong but because the lawsuit itself is the punishment. Discovery costs. Motions cost. Hearings cost. Most people fold long before a case ever reaches trial, not because they were wrong but because they cannot afford to be right.

I understood that abstractly. As of November 2025, I understand it from the inside.

On November 27, 2025, Philip L. Ellison, a licensed Michigan attorney and the principal of Outside Legal Counsel PLC, filed a defamation lawsuit against me in Saginaw County Circuit Court, Case No. 25-2441-CZ. He filed it without legal authority to do so, in violation of a federal automatic stay, against a pro se single mother who had been reporting on his conduct in active litigation. He filed it in a county two and a half hours from my home. He obtained a preliminary injunction by having me drive five hours while he attended by Zoom, gave me minutes to review a document without counsel, and had the presiding judge ask me directly to sign it.

UPEPA became effective on March 24, 2026. On May 6, 2026, I filed a special motion under that statute. The moment I filed it, all proceedings in this case were automatically stayed by the Michigan Legislature. The May 15, 2026 show cause hearing, at which Ellison hoped to have me held in contempt of a void injunction, is stayed. Not by Borrello’s discretion. Not by the Court of Appeals. By a statute whose legislative history includes my name as a supporter.

The Part That Is Almost Too Good to Be True — But Is Documented

Here is the part of this story that I could not have written as fiction.

On February 3, 2026, while actively prosecuting this lawsuit against me, Philip L. Ellison filed his own civil action in Saginaw County Circuit Court: Ellison et al. v. Consumers Energy Company and Michigan Public Service Commission, Case No. 26-000243-CZ, before the Honorable Julie A. Gafkay. He filed it before UPEPA’s effective date.

On March 26, 2026, two days after UPEPA took effect, Ellison filed a Special Motion for Expedited Relief Under 2025 PA 52 in that pre-UPEPA lawsuit. He argued that UPEPA applies to causes of action asserted after March 24, 2026, even in lawsuits filed before the effective date. He sought the automatic stay. He sought the expedited hearing. He sought the fee-shifting.

On April 20, 2026, he filed it again. A second UPEPA special motion in the same pre-UPEPA lawsuit, this time against Consumers Energy’s amended counterclaims, styled as a Pre-Answer Motion for Summary Disposition combined with a Special Motion for Expedited Relief Under UPEPA. He is still pursuing that motion. It has a June 4, 2026 hearing date before Judge Gafkay.

That is the identical legal position I advance in my motion. That might be the only thing Philip Ellison and I have ever agreed on.

And it is the position that judicial estoppel now locks him into. Under Opland v. Kiesgan, 234 Mich App 352 (1999), judicial estoppel prevents a party from taking a legal position in one proceeding that directly contradicts a position that party has successfully advanced in another. The three elements are satisfied here. The inconsistency is direct and unmistakable. He filed the position with a court of competent jurisdiction. And the unfair detriment to me is manifest: I face contempt proceedings, potential sanctions, and the chilling of my protected speech, while he simultaneously invokes the same law to shield himself from a utility company’s counterclaims in a legal fight he picked.

Allowing Ellison to argue that UPEPA applies when he is the moving party but not when he is the responding party would make a mockery of judicial estoppel and of UPEPA itself.

What UPEPA Actually Does and Why the Automatic Stay Matters

Michigan’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, MCL 691.1851 et seq., protects communications in governmental proceedings, communications on issues under consideration in governmental proceedings, and the exercise of the right of freedom of speech or of the press on matters of public concern. A party may file a special motion within 60 days of service of a pleading asserting an eligible cause of action.

Three provisions of the Act are directly relevant to my situation.

The automatic stay. MCL 691.1854(1)(a) provides that upon the filing of a special motion, all proceedings between the parties are automatically stayed. Not stayed pending the court’s review. Not stayed if the judge agrees. Automatically stayed. The Legislature made a deliberate policy choice to protect defendants from having to continue litigating during the period when the court is determining whether the underlying expression is protected. I filed the motion on May 6. The stay is in effect.

The expedited hearing. MCL 691.1855 requires the court to hear the motion within 60 days. This is not ordinary motion practice. The Legislature understood that SLAPP defendants face irreversible harm from delay and built a fast track into the statute.

The mandatory fee-shifting. MCL 691.1860(a) provides that the court shall award court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and reasonable litigation expenses to a prevailing moving party. Shall. Not may. Not at the court’s discretion. Shall. Philip L. Ellison is seeking the identical mandatory fee-shifting against Consumers Energy in Case No. 26-000243-CZ. He cannot argue it is unavailable in my case.

The Article That Started the Contempt Proceeding

On April 25, 2026, I published an investigative article titled Ghost Witness: How a Michigan Attorney Fabricated a Media Contact Using ProtonMail to Prop Up a SLAPP Case. The article documented my investigation into the existence of a purported witness identified in Ellison’s court filings as Samantha Aljouny of Aljouny Media Consulting, with the contact email SAljounyMediaConsulting@proton.me. I searched Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, LexisNexis, media byline archives, journalism directories, and Michigan state business registration databases. The result was uniform: no articles, no professional presence, no business registration, no verifiable public record of any kind. I emailed the ProtonMail address on February 13, 2026. No response.

The article was published more than thirty days after UPEPA’s March 24, 2026 effective date. It did not name Philip Ellison. Every factual assertion was documented in public court records. The injunction Ellison had obtained against me contained its own carve-out language protecting reporting on public court proceedings without false statements of fact concerning Plaintiffs. The article made no false statements. It did not name Plaintiffs. It reported documented investigative findings about a witness whose existence cannot be confirmed in any public record.

On April 30, 2026, Ellison filed an ex parte motion for a show cause order. That motion was filed the day after a session on my website from an IP address registered to LakeNet LLC of Dearborn, Michigan, identified through federal PACER records as associated with Ellison, accessed seven pages of this platform between 8:45 AM and 11:56 AM, and the same afternoon Ellison transmitted a retraction demand. Judge Borrello signed the show cause order on April 30, 2026. The May 15, 2026 contempt hearing is based entirely on my April 25 article. That article is post-effective-date expression on a matter of public concern. It is precisely what UPEPA was designed to protect.

The Judicial Estoppel Trap and Why He Cannot Escape It

The cleanest part of this motion, legally, is the judicial estoppel argument. It requires almost no inference. The facts are documented on two public dockets in the same courthouse.

In Case No. 26-000243-CZ, Ellison has taken the position that UPEPA applies to causes of action asserted after March 24, 2026, even in lawsuits filed before the effective date. He filed that position on March 26. He filed it again on April 20. He is actively litigating under it with a June 4 hearing date. He has sought the automatic stay, the expedited hearing, and the mandatory fee-shifting that flow from that position.

To oppose my UPEPA motion, he must argue the opposite: that UPEPA does not apply to post-effective-date causes of action in pre-effective-date lawsuits. That is the mirror image of what he has filed thirty feet away from Borrello’s courtroom. Judicial estoppel forecloses that argument. He built the trap himself.

I want to be precise about one thing in the interest of accuracy. Judge Gafkay denied Ellison’s first UPEPA motion on April 16 as moot, because Consumers Energy amended their counterclaims and the original motion no longer addressed the operative pleading. That denial was procedural, not substantive. It was not a rejection of the UPEPA applicability argument. Ellison filed his second UPEPA motion on April 20 against the amended counterclaims, and that motion is pending. He is still arguing for the legal position. The judicial estoppel argument is built on that live, pending position.

What He Cannot Do Now

He cannot argue that UPEPA does not apply. Judicial estoppel forecloses it.

He cannot proceed with the May 15 hearing. The automatic stay forecloses it.

He cannot argue that fee-shifting is inappropriate. He is seeking the identical provision against Consumers Energy.

He cannot argue that my April 25 article was not protected expression on a matter of public concern. An investigative article documenting that a witness submitted in active litigation before a Michigan circuit court does not exist in any verifiable public record is not a peripheral matter. It is accountability journalism about the integrity of judicial proceedings. If Ellison’s regulatory advocacy before the Michigan Public Service Commission warrants UPEPA protection, as he argues in Case No. 26-000243-CZ, then my reporting on judicial proceedings warrants it with considerably more force.

He cannot argue that I cannot afford the defamation claim to proceed on the merits, because UPEPA’s burden-shifting provision requires him to demonstrate a prima facie case before I have to respond. He has to show a false statement of fact. He has never identified one. The article did not name him. The ghost witness investigation has not been rebutted by any sworn testimony. The AGC complaint he swore was closed is open and assigned to a named senior investigator. Accurate reporting cannot constitute defamation.

Why I Am Writing About This

I am writing about this because I was a named supporter of this bill and I think the people who worked to pass it deserve to know that it worked exactly as intended in at least one case: mine.

I am writing about this because the access to justice gap is not abstract. It is a pro se single mother driving five hours to a hearing while the opposing party Zooms in from his office. It is a speech-limiting injunction signed under judicial pressure without counsel. It is a show cause proceeding triggered by a surveillance session correlated with a retraction demand the day after investigative findings were placed before the court. It is twenty-plus filings in seven days without a law degree or a salary, while protecting children who are afraid of strangers at the door because the opposing party’s client threatened to kill their mother.

I am writing about this because the person who sued me to silence my journalism about Michigan courts is now subject to an anti-SLAPP motion built from his own court filings, in the same courthouse, filed by the journalist he sued. That is not irony. That is the law working.

The automatic stay is in effect. The hearing is stayed. The Legislature said so.

I supported that bill. I am glad it passed.