The underlying dispute is Koeppel v. Wilker, Case No. 24-cv-06457-NW, a civil action that has been in litigation for nearly two years in the Northern District of California. Defendants subpoenaed third-party William Paatalo for documents and a deposition in October and November 2025, after plaintiffs' own Rule 26 disclosures had identified Paatalo as someone with discoverable information. Paatalo and plaintiffs both objected on privilege grounds. Magistrate Judge Cousins granted defendants' motion to compel in December 2025, specifically finding that the objections were "baseless" and that the maneuvering to prevent the deposition demonstrated "gamesmanship."
The dispute then migrated to Montana, where Paatalo — acting pro se — filed a motion to modify the subpoenas in January 2026. The District of Montana denied that motion in February, finding that Paatalo had waived any objection to the subpoenas by failing to respond properly and timely when they were first served. Paatalo nonetheless reasserted all waived objections, including privilege claims, when he produced only 404 of roughly 6,143 emails he had reviewed. At his deposition, he asserted attorney-client privilege, attorney work product, and trade-secret protections throughout — even though he is not a lawyer and was not engaged to assist one. The Montana court granted defendants' subsequent motion to compel and ordered full production.
Two days before the April 4, 2026 production deadline — and approximately five months after the subpoenas were issued — plaintiff Gary Koeppel filed his own pro se motion to intervene in the Montana proceeding, claiming privilege over a large portion of Paatalo's documents. Judge Noël Wise noted in her April 16 order that the motion was "suspiciously sophisticated," reading as though written by a lawyer, with case citations and complex legal arguments. The Montana court denied the intervention motion as untimely on April 14, 2026, and ordered Paatalo to produce no fewer than 6,143 emails by 5:00 p.m. on April 16, 2026 — irrespective of what appeared on Koeppel's privilege log.
At a pretrial conference on April 14, 2026, Judge Wise questioned Freshman directly about his involvement. Freshman said he had reviewed the motion "just to make sure that spelling was correct and things of that nature" and was not acting on Koeppel's behalf as an attorney, characterizing his role as making sure "t's were crossed and the i's were dotted." The court asked what other relationship he could possibly have been acting in, given that the Montana proceeding was entirely derivative of the California case, that Freshman had previously drafted privilege objections to the Paatalo subpoenas on the Koeppels' behalf, and that the motion was filed to protect attorney-client communications between Koeppel and Freshman that were in Paatalo's possession. Freshman did not answer that question.
When the court pressed Freshman on the legal basis for the privilege designations in the 276-entry log, Freshman acknowledged he could not point to any supporting law. Judge Wise found that she could not credit Freshman's claim that his assistance was limited to proofreading, and further found that Freshman either directed Koeppel to designate emails as privileged on specious reasoning, or reviewed Koeppel's own designations and made no attempt to correct them despite having no legal or factual basis to support them. The court described these findings as "extremely troubling."
Defendants' lead counsel, Jessica MacGregor, suggested that terminating sanctions or sanctions barring Paatalo from appearing at trial may be warranted. Judge Wise deferred any ruling until defendants could review the production ordered due April 16, directed defendants to inform the court by April 17 how they wished to proceed, and stated that the court would thereafter issue a ruling directly addressing plaintiffs' conduct.