Litigation Schemes 101: How to Spot the Playbook and Protect Yourself

Most lawyers are not running schemes. The ones who are tend to use the same handful of moves, in civil court, in probate, and in protective order cases. Here is what those moves look like, what Michigan law already says about each one, and where the guardrails are still thin.

I read a lot of dockets. After a while you stop reading them for the arguments and start reading them for the shape. Who filed what, when, and in which court. How long the other side had to respond. Whether the motion got decided or just got stacked on top of the next one. Whether the fee petition is bigger than the thing the case was supposedly about.

The shape is where schemes show themselves. Not in one outrageous filing. In the rhythm.

This guide is the rhythm, broken into the moves that recur across Michigan civil, probate, and family dockets, paired with the rule or statute that already answers each one. It is written for the person who just got served and for the people who write the rules. Both need the same map.

What a Scheme Is, Legally Speaking

Michigan does not have a statute called “litigation scheme.” It has a tort that captures the core of one. In Friedman v Dozorc, 412 Mich 1 (1981), the Michigan Supreme Court held that abuse of process requires two things: an ulterior purpose, and an act in the use of process that is improper in the regular prosecution of the proceeding. Filing a lawsuit you hope wins is not abuse of process, even if you dislike the defendant. Using a deposition notice, a subpoena, or a garnishment as a lever to extract something unrelated to the case is.

The same decision set a high bar for suing over a baseless civil case after it ends. A malicious prosecution claim based on a prior civil suit requires a special injury beyond the ordinary burden of being sued. That bar is the structural reason schemes are cheap to run. The ordinary burden of being sued, the legal fees, the missed work, the stress, is exactly what a scheme is built to inflict, and it is the part the law treats as not compensable on its own.

So the practical definition used in this guide is the Friedman test applied at the level of the pattern. Is there a purpose the process was not designed to serve? Are there acts in the case that make sense only in light of that purpose?

What a Scheme Is Not

Before the playbook, the counterweight. Aggressive litigation is legal. Zealous advocacy is an ethical duty. A lawyer who files a strong motion, asks for every document the rules allow, refuses a lowball settlement, or seeks fees a statute authorizes is doing the job. Losing a motion does not make the other side’s motion frivolous, and a lawyer you find rude is not by that fact running a scheme.

The distinction that holds up in front of a judge is purpose plus pattern. A single overbroad discovery request is a discovery dispute. Discovery requests that track a person’s speech rather than the claims, served on a schedule that lands every response deadline on a hearing date, are evidence of something else. The moves below are flags, not verdicts. One flag is a conversation with the court. A cluster of them is a record.

The Civil Playbook

The lawsuit built to cost, not to win

The classic version is the SLAPP: a defamation, tortious interference, or similar claim filed against someone for speaking, reviewing, reporting, petitioning a government body, or filing a complaint. The plaintiff does not need to win. The plaintiff needs the defendant to spend enough money that the next person thinks twice. Until this year Michigan defendants had no dedicated tool for this. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press noted in December 2025 that Michigan was one of only 12 states without an anti-SLAPP statute.

That changed with 2025 PA 52, Michigan’s version of the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, at MCL 691.1851 to 691.1863. It covers claims based on speech, press, assembly, petition, or association on a matter of public concern, allows a special motion to dismiss filed within 60 days of service, stays proceedings while the motion is pending, awards fees to a defendant who wins the motion, and grants an appeal of right if the motion is denied. It applies to claims asserted on or after March 24, 2026. It also carries a long list of exemptions, including commercial speech about a seller’s own goods and claims under specified civil rights, whistleblower, and employment statutes.

Discovery as a weapon

Discovery is supposed to find facts relevant to the claims. In a scheme it finds other things: a critic’s sources, a family member’s medical history, a small business’s customer list, a target’s finances, their phone records, their social media. The flags are requests that reach far past the pleadings, subpoenas to employers or third parties whose only function is to let them know you are being sued, and depositions noticed in volume against people with no knowledge of the claims.

The answer is MCR 2.302(C), which lets a court enter a protective order to shield a party or witness from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense. MCR 2.313 provides sanctions for discovery abuse running in either direction. The ethics rule behind both is MRPC 4.4, which bars a lawyer from using means that have “no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person.” In 2023, attorney Thomas R. Warnicke accepted a reprimand by consent that included a violation of that rule, Case No. 22-81-GA.

Motion volume and the fee clock

Some cases are not argued so much as flooded. Motion after motion, each requiring a written response, each scheduled close to the last, each one cheap for the filer and expensive for the responder. Paired with a fee-shifting contract clause or a statutory fee claim, the volume becomes the point: the bill grows faster than the dispute, and settlement starts to look cheaper than winning.

Every one of those filings carries a certification. Under MCR 1.109(E), a signature certifies that the signer read the document, that after reasonable inquiry it is well grounded in fact and warranted by law, and that it was not filed for an improper purpose such as harassment, delay, or needless cost. A document signed in violation can draw sanctions, including the other side’s reasonable expenses and attorney fees. MCL 600.2591 separately awards costs and fees when a court finds an action or defense frivolous.

Two details matter. First, in Bradley v Frye-Chaiken (2024), the Michigan Supreme Court held that sanctions under the court rule attach to the attorney who signed the frivolous document and the represented party, not to a later lawyer who merely litigated the sanctions. If the filer rotates attorneys, track who signed what. Second, sanctions are not routine. In BJ’s & Sons Construction Co v Van Sickle, 266 Mich App 400 (2005), the Court of Appeals opened by calling the case a rare one in which a trial court granted sanctions for frivolous litigation, then affirmed them.

Discipline is the slower backstop. In Case No. 93-141-GA, a hearing panel revoked the license of William A. Ortman after finding he filed vexatious pleadings in Oakland County Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals, and the Michigan Supreme Court for no purpose other than to harass his opposition and expose them to needless cost. In Case No. 09-43-GA, a panel suspended Raymond A. Macdonald for two years for frivolous pleadings filed to delay district court proceedings, with the order pending appeal when the notice issued.

Ex parte shortcuts

An ex parte request is one the other side does not get to answer before the judge rules. Emergency orders, temporary restraining orders, ex parte PPOs, and emergency guardianship petitions all exist for real emergencies. In a scheme they exist to get the first ruling on a one-sided record, then make the target spend the next month undoing it.

The rule that governs this is MRPC 3.3(d): in an ex parte proceeding, a lawyer must tell the tribunal all material facts the lawyer knows, including the unhelpful ones. In Case No. 16-55-GA, a hearing panel suspended Otis M. Underwood Jr. for 179 days in a fee dispute after finding, among other violations, that he failed to inform the tribunal of all known material facts in an ex parte proceeding. The order was pending review when the notice issued. If you were not in the room, get the transcript or the written petition, and compare it to what the filer knew.

Service games and defaults

A default judgment requires that the defendant was served and did not answer. A scheme makes sure one of those is true on paper. The flags: a proof of service at an address you left years ago, a service date that does not match where you actually were, or a case you learn about only when a garnishment hits your account. MCR 2.603 allows a default to be set aside on a showing of good cause and a meritorious defense, supported by affidavit. The faster you move after learning of the default, the stronger that showing tends to be.

Paper on the property

A lien, lis pendens, or other recorded document on a house can freeze a sale or refinance long after the underlying claim is dead. Michigan treats the bad-faith version seriously. MCL 600.2907a makes a person who encumbers property through a recorded document without lawful cause, “with the intent to harass or intimidate,” liable to the owner for costs, actual damages, and exemplary damages, and the same conduct can be charged as a crime.

The Probate Playbook

Probate schemes look different because the target often cannot fight back. The person at the center may be elderly, ill, or already declared legally incapacitated, and the people who would fight for them, usually family, may not be told until the order is entered.

The pattern reported in Michigan for nearly a decade runs like this. An emergency or temporary guardianship petition is filed with thin medical support. A professional guardian is appointed instead of a willing family member. The protected person is moved out of the home, sometimes with restricted visitation. The house is sold. Fees for the guardian, the guardian’s attorney, and sometimes a guardian ad litem are paid from the estate, and the estate shrinks. WXYZ’s 7 Investigators, who have covered the system since 2017, reported that one Macomb County professional guardian billed a Utica couple’s estate more than $376,000 in fees, and that the guardian later stepped away from the disputed case after the coverage.

The Legislature has moved in pieces. In July 2026, Governor Whitmer signed Senate Bill 586, sponsored by Sen. Ruth Johnson, which bars a guardian from changing an incapacitated person’s residence without court approval after showing the move is necessary and appropriate. She signed Senate Bill 585, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Irwin, which requires a licensed appraisal before a protected person’s home is sold. A separate package to license professional guardians and conservators through LARA, House Bills 4727 through 4729 and 4959, passed the House in June 2026. State Rep. Kelly Breen, who voted for most of it, said publicly that the package still does not keep people out of unnecessary guardianships or require judges to put their reasoning on the record. As of this writing the licensing bills have not become law.

Fee drain has a rule. In decedent estates, MCR 5.313 requires a written fee agreement, notice to interested persons within 14 days of appointment or retention, itemized records, and court approval of fees before payment whenever a written objection is pending. An interested person may object at any time before the court allows the fees. Objecting in writing, early, changes the burden: the attorney seeking compensation has to prove the fees are reasonable.

The PPO and Family Court Playbook

Personal protection orders save lives. That is why they are issued fast, often ex parte, and enforced through contempt and arrest. It is also why a PPO is a powerful thing to hold in a custody fight, a divorce, or a business dispute between former partners. A respondent can be ordered out of a home, cut off from children, and flagged in the Law Enforcement Information Network before any hearing.

The flags of misuse are timing and leverage: a petition filed days before a custody hearing, a petition describing conduct the petitioner’s own messages contradict, a PPO followed immediately by a contempt motion over ambiguous contact, or an offer to drop the PPO in exchange for concessions in another case. None of those proves a false petition. Together they are what a judge needs to hear.

The respondent’s tool is MCR 3.707. A motion to modify or terminate an ex parte PPO must be filed within 14 days after service or actual notice unless good cause is shown, and the court must schedule a hearing. MCL 600.2950 makes a petitioner who knowingly and intentionally makes a false statement in support of a petition subject to the court’s contempt power. That provision cuts both ways and should: it protects genuine petitioners from having the PPO process cheapened, and it protects respondents from orders built on fabrications.

Family court adds a pressure point specific to people without lawyers. Under MRPC 4.3, which Michigan now titles “Dealing With a Self-Represented Person,” a lawyer may not imply to an unrepresented person that the lawyer is disinterested, and may not give that person legal advice beyond advising them to get counsel when their interests conflict with the lawyer’s client. If opposing counsel is explaining your rights to you, what you “have to” sign, or what the judge “will” do, that is a flag. Write down what was said and when.

Stacking: When One Case Becomes Five

The most effective schemes are not one case. They are a civil suit in one county, a PPO petition in another, a grievance against the target’s lawyer, a complaint to the target’s employer or licensing agency, and a motion for contempt in whichever court is moving fastest. Each filing may survive scrutiny on its own. The burden is in the combination, because each forum sees only its own piece and the target pays for all of them.

Michigan has a partial answer inside a single court. MCR 8.111(D) requires that related actions arising out of the same transaction or occurrence be assigned to the same judge, and that a case dismissed and refiled go back to the judge who had it. That rule exists in part to stop judge shopping. It does not reach across counties, across court types, or into agencies, and no Michigan court cross-references the same parties across venues by default. If you are being stacked, you are the only person who sees the whole map until you put it in front of someone.

How to Protect Yourself

Start a master timeline the day you are served, and keep it in one place. Every filing, every hearing, every deadline, every phone call, with the date it happened and the document that proves it. Add a column for the forum, because if you are being stacked the timeline is the only document that shows it. Courts respond to chronology. Lead with dates, not feelings, and you will be believed faster.

Calendar deadlines in two places and count them yourself. Do not rely on the other side’s stated dates or the clerk’s verbal estimate. The anti-SLAPP motion, the PPO challenge, the default set-aside, the discovery objection, and the fee objection each have their own clock, and several can run at once.

Read the signature block on every filing. Note the attorney, the bar number, and the date. If a document is frivolous, the sanction motion under MCR 1.109(E) needs to name the person who certified it. Be specific in any sanctions motion. Identify the document, the false or unsupported statement, what the signer knew or could have learned with reasonable inquiry, and the cost it caused you. A general complaint about the other side’s tactics will lose. A documented one may not.

Object in writing, every time, and keep proof that you did. A written objection to discovery, to a proposed guardian, to a home sale, or to a fee petition preserves the issue and in probate shifts the burden to the person seeking payment. Silence is often treated as consent.

Ask the court to connect related cases. In the same court, request reassignment under MCR 8.111(D) if a related or refiled case landed with a different judge. Across courts, attach the other filings to your response so each judge sees the whole picture, even if no rule requires them to look.

Use the oversight bodies, with the record in hand. A grievance to the Attorney Grievance Commission about specific filings, with copies attached, is stronger than a grievance about a lawyer’s personality. Discipline will not end your case, but it creates a record that outlasts it. For guardianship concerns, the Attorney General’s Elder Abuse Task Force has invited reports.

Get counsel if you can, even for a single consultation, and use the free resources if you cannot. Michigan Legal Help publishes court forms and explanations for self-represented people, and local legal aid organizations handle many family, housing, and elder cases. A lawyer who reviews your timeline once may spot the deadline that matters most.

Finally, keep your own conduct clean. Do not contact a PPO petitioner. Do not post about the case in ways that hand the other side a new claim. Do not miss a hearing to make a point. A scheme feeds on reactions. The protection is the record, and the record is better when it shows only one side behaving badly.

Where the Guardrails Are Thin

Each tool above exists. The problem is that each one is triggered by the target, on the target’s dime, inside a single forum, and usually after the damage is done. The scorecard below grades the main Michigan safeguards on how well they answer the tactics described in this guide, based on the rules and records cited here.

What Fixing It Would Actually Require

None of this requires abolishing aggressive litigation. It requires moving the burden of seeing the pattern off the person being targeted.

First, courts should be able to see the same parties across venues. SCAO already operates statewide case management. A party-matching flag that tells a judge when the same litigants have active matters in other Michigan courts, including PPO and probate dockets, would let the judge ask the question the target currently has to raise alone.

Second, sanctions decisions under MCR 1.109(E) and MCL 600.2591 should come with written findings either way, and SCAO should publish how often sanctions are sought and granted. A deterrent nobody can measure is not much of a deterrent.

Third, the guardianship package should be finished. That means licensing professional guardians, screening for civil financial violations as well as criminal ones, capping caseloads, and requiring a judge to state on the record why a willing family member was passed over. The Elder Abuse Task Force has asked for most of this for years. The July 2026 laws were the first installment, not the last.

Fourth, ex parte relief should carry a disclosure obligation the court can see. A short required statement on emergency petitions identifying any other pending matter between the parties, in any court, would make MRPC 3.3(d) enforceable at the moment it matters instead of in a grievance a year later.

Fifth, the State Bar and courts should publish plain-language guidance for self-represented people on the specific tools in this guide and their deadlines. The anti-SLAPP motion is useless to someone who learns about it on day 61.

Why This Matters

A court is supposed to be the place where the stronger party has to prove its case like anyone else. A litigation scheme inverts that. It turns the cost of defending yourself into the weapon, and it works best against the people least able to absorb the cost: the elderly person in a guardianship, the parent without a lawyer, the small business owner who wrote an honest review, the whistleblower who filed a complaint.

The rules described here were written by people who understood that risk. What they did not build is a system that notices the pattern on its own. Until they do, the record is your protection. Keep it in date order. Put the deadlines on top. And if you are watching a pattern like this play out in a Michigan court, send it through Clutch Intel.