Michigan courts have no consistent, enforceable mechanism for recognizing and terminating legal process abuse, meaning a stalker with access to a licensed attorney can use civil litigation as a contact vector even after a Personal Protection Order is in place. When a judge is informed of this pattern and fails to act, the court itself becomes the instrument of the abuse. It took over 20 motions, a Court of Appeals case, and a complaint to the Judicial Tenure Commission before this conduct was checked in Saginaw County. That is not an outlier. That is how the system is built.
What I Told the Judge
I told Saginaw County Judge Andre Borrello that I was being stalked. I did not say it once. I said it in writing, in court, through filings, through the documented procedural record. I had already obtained two Personal Protection Orders, each of which reflects a judicial finding that the circumstances warranted legal protection from contact. Those PPOs did not stop the contact. They changed the method. The contact moved into the courthouse.
The mechanism is straightforward and well-documented in stalking research: where direct contact is legally prohibited, a motivated stalker with access to a licensed attorney can substitute litigation. Every motion is a communication. Every scheduled hearing is a forced encounter. Every discovery demand is surveillance with a court caption on it. The courthouse becomes the means of access, and the judge, whether by negligence or indifference, becomes the instrument.
I told Borrello this was happening. He had the PPOs in front of him. He had the procedural history. He let it continue.
Presiding judge in the proceedings at issue. Was informed by a party before his court that legal process was being used as a stalking vector. At the time of disclosure, two Personal Protection Orders documenting the stalking relationship were already part of the record. Allowed proceedings to continue. Relief was ultimately obtained only after more than 20 motions, a Court of Appeals case, and a formal JTC Complaint.
The Anatomy of Legal Process Abuse
Legal process abuse, sometimes called litigation harassment or vexatious litigation in the context of domestic abuse, is not a fringe concept. It is documented in domestic violence research, in family court scholarship, and in attorney ethics literature. The pattern is consistent: a person subject to a protective order, or at risk of one, uses civil litigation to maintain a presence in the victim’s life that the order cannot touch. The attorney who files on their behalf either does not recognize the function of the filings or does not care.
A Personal Protection Order answers the question of direct contact. It does not answer the question of indirect contact through legal process. Michigan courts have the inherent authority to sanction abuse of process. They almost never use it. That gap is not an accident. It is a design choice, and stalking victims pay for it.
When the pattern is functioning, the victim is not simply harassed. The victim is consumed. Every motion requires a response. Every hearing requires appearance. Every document demand requires engagement. The stalker, insulated by the procedural structure of civil litigation, generates obligation after obligation while the victim’s time, resources, and psychological stability erode. The courthouse provides cover. The docket provides plausible deniability. And a judge who does not act provides legitimacy.
What the Record Shows
The procedural history here is not ambiguous. The disclosure of stalking through legal process was made to Judge Borrello on the record. The PPOs were in evidence. The pattern of filings, the frequency, the nature of the demands, the absence of legitimate legal purpose proportionate to the conduct alleged, were all documentable. A judge exercising the inherent authority of a Michigan circuit court to manage proceedings before it had everything needed to act.
The presiding judge was informed, on the record, that legal process was functioning as a stalking vector. Two PPOs documenting the underlying stalking relationship were already part of the evidentiary record. The proceedings continued without intervention.
The victim was required to litigate more than 20 motions, obtain a ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals, and file a formal Judicial Tenure Commission complaint before the abusive proceedings were checked. This is not a system functioning at the margins of adequacy. It is a system that placed the full burden of terminating judicially facilitated stalking on the person being stalked.
The harassment proceeded through a licensed attorney. Michigan’s attorney discipline infrastructure, like its judicial accountability infrastructure, operates reactively. The State Bar’s grievance process is not designed to interrupt an active pattern. It is designed to adjudicate it after the fact, if at all.
Why Michigan Courts Are Structurally Unprepared for This
Michigan’s stalking statutes are adequate on paper. MCL 750.411h and MCL 750.411i define stalking and aggravated stalking, provide for criminal penalties, and authorize courts to issue Personal Protection Orders. What those statutes do not do is instruct courts on what to do when the stalker moves the contact vector into the civil docket.
Michigan’s court rules provide for sanctions against vexatious litigants under MCR 2.114 and MCR 2.625. They are almost never applied proactively. The burden of demonstrating that litigation is vexatious falls on the person being harassed by it, who must litigate the question of whether they are being harassed through litigation. That is not an accident of drafting. It reflects a default judicial posture that treats all civil filings as presumptively legitimate regardless of context.
When a PPO is in place and a party discloses to the presiding judge that the opposing party is using legal process as a contact and harassment vector, Michigan courts have no standard protocol for early intervention. The judge’s response is entirely discretionary. When that discretion is not exercised, the victim’s only path is continued litigation, which is itself the harm.
The Judicial Tenure Commission process is investigative, deliberate, and slow by design. It is appropriate for retrospective accountability. It is not appropriate as the primary mechanism for stopping ongoing judicial facilitation of stalking. That a JTC complaint was required here to obtain relief is not a success story. It is an indictment of every prior procedural level that failed.
What the JTC Complaint Actually Accomplished
The JTC Complaint produced relief. That matters and should be said plainly. The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission exists for exactly these circumstances, and in this case, it functioned. The question Michigan should be asking is why this level of escalation was necessary in the first place, and what the answer reveals about the institutional posture of Saginaw County’s circuit court under Judge Borrello’s management of this case.
It also reveals something about the leverage available to stalking victims inside the civil justice system. The Court of Appeals was required. The JTC was required. The trial court level, the level where this should have been resolved, provided no adequate remedy for years of documented procedural harassment. That is the record.
If a victim must obtain two PPOs, disclose stalking on the record to the presiding judge, litigate more than 20 motions, win at the Court of Appeals, and file a JTC Complaint before the harassment stops, what exactly is the court system protecting?
What Reform Would Actually Look Like
Michigan court rules should require a presiding judge, upon disclosure that a PPO relationship exists between parties in civil litigation, to conduct an on-the-record evaluation of whether the proceedings constitute abuse of process. The evaluation should be documented. The failure to conduct it should be grounds for appellate review.
MCR 2.114 and MCR 2.625 should be amended to instruct courts that where a PPO is in place, the threshold for finding that litigation is vexatious is materially lower, and that attorney certification of good faith in such filings carries heightened scrutiny. The State Bar should be required to cross-reference PPO records in attorney disciplinary proceedings.
The JTC’s current process is retrospective. Michigan should consider a fast-track mechanism for JTC review when a complainant can demonstrate ongoing judicial facilitation of harm, specifically where a PPO is in place, disclosure has been made, and the presiding judge has failed to act. This is not about speed for its own sake. It is about the difference between accountability and remedy.
The Michigan Judicial Institute should incorporate legal process abuse, its documented patterns, its documented effects, and the judicial tools available to address it, into mandatory continuing education for Michigan circuit court judges. Judicial discretion cannot be exercised by judges who do not recognize the pattern they are being asked to address.
This Is Not Just My Case
I am writing this because it happened to me, and because I know it is not an isolated incident. Legal process abuse in stalking and domestic violence contexts is documented nationally. It surfaces in family court, in civil harassment proceedings, in landlord-tenant matters filed against victims by abusers, in employment litigation. The courthouse is available as a tool to anyone with the resources to use it, and the system’s default response to reports of its misuse is to require the victim to keep litigating.
What makes the Saginaw County situation documentable is the clarity of the record. I told the judge. There were PPOs. The abuse continued. That is not a case where the system failed because it lacked information. It is a case where the system had the information and failed anyway. That distinction matters for reform, because the solution is not better disclosure requirements. The solution is accountability for what judges do with the disclosures they already receive.
Clutch Justice is tracking this case and Michigan’s legal process abuse gap. If you have experienced litigation weaponized in a stalking or protective order context in a Michigan court, the documented record matters. Contact hello@clutchjustice.com.
Sources and Documentation
Rita Williams, When the Court Becomes the Weapon: How Michigan’s Legal System Fails Stalking Victims, Clutch Justice (May 7, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/when-the-court-becomes-the-weapon/.
Williams, R. (2026, May 7). When the court becomes the weapon: How Michigan’s legal system fails stalking victims. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/when-the-court-becomes-the-weapon/
Williams, Rita. “When the Court Becomes the Weapon: How Michigan’s Legal System Fails Stalking Victims.” Clutch Justice, 7 May 2026, clutchjustice.com/when-the-court-becomes-the-weapon/.
Williams, Rita. “When the Court Becomes the Weapon: How Michigan’s Legal System Fails Stalking Victims.” Clutch Justice, May 7, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/when-the-court-becomes-the-weapon/.
