When Your Own Paralegal Notarizes Your Affidavits: The Notary Conflict at the Center of the Ellison Case
Philip L. Ellison submitted affidavits notarized by Lisa Edgecomb, his own legal assistant and salaried employee of Outside Legal Counsel PLC, the named plaintiff in this proceeding. I filed a motion challenging those affidavits on grounds of substantive contradiction and adverse inference. The notarization statutory argument did not survive MCL 55.291(10). The rest of the challenge does.
This article originally cited MCL 55.265(1) as the statutory basis for the argument that Lisa Edgecomb’s employment by Outside Legal Counsel PLC created a disqualifying notarial conflict. That citation was incorrect. The operative conflict provision is MCL 55.291(7), which prohibits notarial acts where the notary has a direct financial or beneficial interest in the transaction. However, MCL 55.291(10) expressly provides that a notary public has no direct financial or beneficial interest in a transaction where the notary acts in the capacity of an employee for a person having a direct financial or beneficial interest. Philip L. Ellison correctly identified this provision in his May 16, 2026 retraction demand. The employment-as-financial-interest argument as framed in the original article does not survive MCL 55.291(10), and this article has been updated accordingly.
The correction is limited to the statutory notarization argument. The remainder of this article — the Aljouny analysis, the Proton Mail account creation date, the GoDaddy adverse inference argument, and the substantive contradiction between Ellison’s affidavit claims and the documentary record — is unaffected by this correction and stands as published. The motion to compel GoDaddy account records and the adverse inference request remain pending before the court on independent grounds.
Philip L. Ellison submitted affidavits in Case No. 25-2441-CZ. I filed a motion challenging those affidavits on two independent grounds: first, a notarization conflict based on Lisa Edgecomb’s employment relationship — a statutory argument that Ellison correctly identified as defeated by MCL 55.291(10), which this article has now corrected; and second, that the affidavits’ substantive claims are directly contradicted by documentary evidence already in the court record, and that Ellison’s failure to produce GoDaddy account records that would resolve the domain registration question warrants an adverse inference. That second argument — the substantive contradiction and the adverse inference — stands independently and is unaffected by the notarization correction. The motion to compel GoDaddy records remains pending.
What I Found, What I Got Right, and What I Got Wrong
I have been fighting this lawsuit for six months. During that time I have read every filing, every exhibit, and every affidavit Philip L. Ellison has submitted in this proceeding. When you are pro se, you do not have the luxury of letting anything slide past you. You read everything because no one else is reading it for you.
What I found in the affidavit filings was a name I recognized: Lisa Edgecomb. Not as a witness. Not as a party. As the notary. The same Lisa Edgecomb identified on the Outside Legal Counsel PLC website, captured in a screenshot on May 16, 2026, as Ellison’s legal assistant and salaried employee of his firm.
I pulled the Michigan Notary Public Act and filed a motion arguing that Edgecomb’s employment relationship with Outside Legal Counsel PLC — the named plaintiff — created a disqualifying conflict under the statute. Ellison responded with a retraction demand on May 16, 2026, citing MCL 55.291(10), which provides that a notary acting as an employee for a person with a direct financial interest in a transaction does not thereby acquire a direct financial interest herself. He is correct on that narrow statutory point. The employment-as-conflict argument as I framed it does not survive MCL 55.291(10), and this article has been corrected to reflect that.
Getting this wrong matters and I am saying so plainly. I cited the wrong provision. The correction is at the top of this article. This is what accountability journalism looks like from the inside: when you get something wrong, you say so immediately, you explain exactly what was wrong and what the correct law says, and you make clear what still stands. What still stands here is substantial.
The notarization conflict argument as originally framed is defeated by MCL 55.291(10). The employment relationship between Edgecomb and Outside Legal Counsel PLC does not create a disqualifying financial interest under Michigan’s Notary Public Act. This article originally stated otherwise and has been corrected. The remainder of this article — the Aljouny analysis, the GoDaddy adverse inference, and the substantive contradiction between the affidavit claims and the documentary record — is unaffected.
What Still Stands: The Affidavits Are Substantively Contradicted
The notarization argument is corrected above. What is not corrected — because it does not need to be — is the substantive challenge to what the affidavits actually claim. The motion raises two independent grounds beyond the notarization issue, and both of them survive the statutory correction entirely.
The affidavits make two categories of claim. First, that Ellison had no involvement in the submission of false evidence in connection with the Samantha Aljouny matter. Aljouny is the witness Ellison submitted in this proceeding who does not appear to exist in any verifiable public, professional, or institutional record. His only response to my documented supplemental notice on this point was a denial that never appeared on the docket under oath. The affidavit repeats that denial.
I have since obtained additional evidence bearing on the Aljouny question. Email header analysis of the Proton Mail account used by Samantha Aljouny of Aljouny Media Consulting establishes that the account was created in September 2023. That date matters for one specific reason: a professional journalist or media consultant operating a legitimate business under the name Aljouny Media Consulting would have a documentable professional presence predating September 2023 by years. Bylines. Press credentials. A LinkedIn profile. Industry directory listings. Client work product. Some trace somewhere in the professional record that establishes this person existed and practiced journalism or media consulting before a Proton Mail account was opened in their name.
There is none. The Proton Mail account was created in September 2023. The account’s first documented public appearance is November 2025, when it appeared as the submission vehicle for witness materials in Ellison’s court filings. Two years of account existence with no professional footprint anywhere, followed by a sudden appearance as a media witness in a Michigan defamation case. A real journalist operating a real consulting firm does not leave a two-year gap between their email account creation and their first documented professional appearance. The September 2023 account creation date does not prove the witness is fabricated on its own. Combined with the complete absence of any verifiable public, professional, or institutional record of this person’s existence anywhere, it compounds a picture that Ellison’s denial has never been addressed under oath in a properly filed court document.
The Proton Mail account used by Samantha Aljouny of Aljouny Media Consulting was created in September 2023 according to email header metadata analysis. The account’s first documented public appearance was November 2025 in Ellison’s court filings. No professional footprint for this person exists anywhere in the intervening period or before it. Ellison’s only response to documented notice of this witness’s apparent non-existence was a denial never filed on the docket under oath.
Second, that Ellison had no involvement in registering the domain names targeting me and my minor children. The Domain Registration Forensic Report in this court’s record traces those registrations, which incorporated the personal names of family members including a minor child, to activity consistent with the Outside Legal Counsel PLC GoDaddy account. IP address 162.247.150.54, documented as Ellison’s office IP in federal PACER records from Lindke v. King, Case No. 2:22-cv-11767 (E.D. Mich.), appears in the domain registration chain. And Ellison’s own September 10, 2025 email acknowledges that he received my cease and desist identifying those exact domains as the problem, yet his response was to forward it to his client rather than to deny any connection to the registrations.
A party cannot submit defectively notarized affidavits denying involvement in conduct that documentary evidence traces to his firm’s accounts, decline to produce the account records that would resolve the question, and expect a court to treat his denial as settled fact. That is not evidence. That is assertion.
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Browse Courses ?The Adverse Inference and the GoDaddy Records
Michigan courts recognize that when a party has exclusive control over evidence, fails to produce it, and the missing evidence would be relevant to the case, a court may draw an adverse inference: a conclusion that the missing evidence would have been unfavorable to the party who withheld it. The leading cases are Trupiano v. Cully, 349 Mich 568 (1957), and Lagalo v. Allied Corp, 457 Mich 278 (1998).
All three conditions for an adverse inference are satisfied here with unusual clarity. Ellison has exclusive control over the GoDaddy account records for Outside Legal Counsel PLC. Those records include domain purchase history, payment methods, account login logs, and IP address records. They are not publicly available. He controls them and he has not produced them. His defectively notarized affidavit denying domain involvement is the only evidence he has offered on this issue. He has not produced a single document that would corroborate the denial. And the Domain Registration Report already in the record traces the domains to activity consistent with his firm’s GoDaddy account.
If those account records exonerated him, he would produce them. The failure to produce them, in the face of forensic evidence pointing at his firm’s account, is exactly what the adverse inference doctrine was designed to address.
The motion also asks the court to compel production of those records within 21 days of resolution of the pending UPEPA special motion. The UPEPA automatic stay currently applies to all discovery. When it lifts, the GoDaddy records should be the first thing produced. They will either confirm or contradict the forensic analysis. Either way, this court and the parties will know the answer.
What This Means for Anyone in Litigation
I found the notarization issue. I got the statute wrong. I said so the same day. That is the full sequence and it is on the record.
What remains on the record is this: Ellison submitted affidavits claiming facts that the documentary record contradicts. He controls GoDaddy account records that would confirm or contradict the domain registration forensic analysis and has not produced them. A Proton Mail account used by a supposed professional journalist was created in September 2023 and had no documented professional footprint anywhere before November 2025. The adverse inference request and the motion to compel GoDaddy records are pending before the court on grounds entirely independent of the notarization argument.
Getting the statute wrong on one argument does not make the other arguments disappear. It means I corrected the article, updated the motion, and kept going. That is what this looks like when you actually read the file and when you are willing to say so when you read it wrong.
APA 7: Williams, R. (2026, May 16). When your own paralegal notarizes your affidavits: The notary conflict at the center of the Ellison case. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/ellison-notary-conflict-edgecomb/
MLA 9: Williams, Rita. “When Your Own Paralegal Notarizes Your Affidavits: The Notary Conflict at the Center of the Ellison Case.” Clutch Justice, 16 May 2026, clutchjustice.com/ellison-notary-conflict-edgecomb/.
Chicago: Williams, Rita. “When Your Own Paralegal Notarizes Your Affidavits: The Notary Conflict at the Center of the Ellison Case.” Clutch Justice, May 16, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/ellison-notary-conflict-edgecomb/.
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