Philip L. Ellison

Identity

The Public Persona

“Humans of Hemlock”

Hemlock Public Schools published a “Faces of Governance” profile of Philip Ellison on their official website (hemlockps.com/article/2614591). The article describes him as “a proud Huskie, a passionate lifelong learner, and a steady advocate for public education.” A prior iteration — “Humans of Hemlock” — described him as making Hemlock “a brighter, more connected place” (hemlockps.com/article/1721872).

The school board president’s husband profiled as a governance hero on the school board’s own website — while that husband is under AGC investigation, owes $73K+ in federal sanctions across two cases, and filed a SLAPP suit against a journalist.

Credential Positioning

Ellison’s credentials are real but strategically positioned to maximize authority:

The SVSU–Gafkay Connection

They are colleagues at the same small university. She is past president of the Saginaw County Bar Association. He is a member. She presides over his cases. MCR 2.003(C)(1) raises the recusal question: personal bias or prejudice concerning a party’s attorney.

Practice Profile

Ellison’s firm website describes a practice focused on:

• Property & riparian rights
• Farms & agri-business
• Class action litigation
• Government transparency (FOIA enforcement)
• Civil rights
• Appeals & appellate practice

He has argued before the Michigan Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court (Lindke v. Freed, social media/First Amendment). He is known for FOIA enforcement litigation. His own site says: “We do not merely send follow-up emails. We analyze statutory deadlines, exemption claims, fee calculations, and litigation posture from the outset.”

The SLAPP Suit

Case No. 25-2441-CZ — Outside Legal Counsel PLC et al. v. Williams

The UPEPA Contradiction

Michigan’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA, 2025 PA 52) is the state’s anti-SLAPP statute. It provides expedited relief and mandatory fee-shifting when a lawsuit targets protected expression.

Ellison’s contradictory positions on UPEPA:

He invoked anti-SLAPP to fight a utility company while running a SLAPP suit against a journalist. The judicial estoppel argument is straightforward: the same attorney cannot take mutually exclusive legal positions in the same court, in overlapping timeframes.

Source: Clutch Justice, May 1, 2026 · Clutch Justice, May 7, 2026

The Fabricated Witness

See: Ghost Witness: Samantha Aljouny

Ellison submitted “Samantha Aljouny” as a witness in the SLAPP suit. Under oath, he swore he had “no connection” to the identity. Forensic analysis identified 13 convergence points linking the Aljouny identity to Ellison or his operations:

1. PGP key created September 20, 2023 — 4 days after a press release in Ahmad v. University of Michigan, an Ellison FOIA case
2. Ahmad v. UM litigation window alignment
3. Controlled Bitly canary test (positive)
4. Device fingerprint matching: iPhone, iOS 18.7, Safari, Fastly CDN, hardware identifier 15E148
5. Violet Ikonomova (Detroit Free Press) independent confirmation of suspicion
6. IP/behavioral correlation across platforms
7. Timing of Aljouny communications correlating with Ellison court filings
8. Knowledge of unpublished case details
9. Communication patterns matching attorney work schedule
10. Email metadata consistent with Hemlock, MI area
11. Writing style analysis
12. Technical sophistication consistent with attorney, not civilian
13. Disappearance pattern correlating with litigation pressure

An IC3 complaint was filed October 6, 2026 (ID: 10f80c476ef144d4a772d0b198c75a2a).

The Edgecomb Notary Problem

Lisa Edgecomb holds three simultaneous roles in Hemlock:

1. Ellison’s legal assistant and notary public (employee, OLC PLC)
2. Deputy Clerk, Richland Township (1180 N. Hemlock Rd) — a government position in the same township where Ellison lives and operates
3. Notarized Ellison’s sworn “no connection” to Aljouny affidavits in the SLAPP suit

On the notary question: Rita Williams challenged Edgecomb’s notarization on financial-interest grounds. Ellison responded with a retraction demand citing MCL 55.291(10), which expressly provides that an employee acting for a financially interested person does not thereby acquire a disqualifying financial interest. Rita corrected the statutory argument. The substantive challenge to the affidavit content remains.

The structural point: Edgecomb is a government official (deputy township clerk) working for a private attorney who routinely sues government bodies for FOIA violations and operates a FOIA-filing platform. She is simultaneously part of the government transparency infrastructure and the law firm that profits from government transparency failures.

Representative Cases

LakeNet LLC — The ISP Connection

Rita identified IP address 162.247.150.54 surveilling her site on April 29, 2026 — the same morning Ellison transmitted a retraction demand. The IP belongs to LakeNet LLC (AS11910).

LakeNet is a broadband ISP headquartered in Hemlock, Michigan — population ~1,500. Outside Legal Counsel PLC is headquartered in Hemlock, Michigan. Same ZIP code (48626). LakeNet is Ellison’s internet service provider. This is independently verifiable from three public registries: ARIN, MPSC, and OLC PLC.

Kevin Lindke — The Client

Ellison’s client in Lindke v. Freed (US Supreme Court) and the person whose conduct triggered the SLAPP suit.

Criminal History (Public Record)

Documented Conduct Toward Rita Williams and Family

Per Rita’s published reporting and court filings:

• Registered internet domains in Rita’s name AND her minor daughter’s name
• Death threats, doxxing, posting children’s photographs to 21,000-member network
• 7 AM Saturday phone call: “I will make you and your children homeless”
• NCMEC CyberTipline report filed Nov 18, 2025 (referred to Michigan ICAC Task Force)
• PPOs obtained from Macomb County (Judge Rancilio)
• Served 105 days in St. Clair County for contempt during PPO violation arraignment
• False police reports filed by Lindke’s network members against Rita
• Process servers sent to Rita’s home after dark, multiple nights, broadcast to Lindke’s 21,000 followers as entertainment

Ellison filed the SLAPP suit two months after Rita spoke up about this conduct. Ellison has been a member of the Through My Eyes Facebook group since July 6, 2020 — the same group Lindke used to coordinate harassment and for which he was criminally convicted.

Sources: Clutch Justice, May 9 · May 11 · May 13

The Ellison Entity Web

Philip L. Ellison controls at least four entities and a portfolio of 29+ domains (with 153 domains historically linked to his business email).

Registered Entities

All three active entities list Philip L Ellison as registered agent. South Brennan Property LLC is a property holding company located one door from his law firm. Quagmire Solutions is the tech company that now operates FOIAworks.

Career Timeline

The path: Web designer → law student → attorney → FOIA litigator → FOIA platform operator. Every skill from the web design era (domain management, web architecture, data collection, hosting) is now deployed in the legal practice and the FOIAworks platform.

The Hemlock Network

The 1111 S Orr Rd address (Quagmire Solutions) is the Ellison family property — Calvin Lee Ellison resides there, and an older family member (age 65-70) is also at that address per voter records.

Katherine Ellison’s dual school board positions — including president of the county-wide ISD — mean that the wife of the attorney who SLAPPed a journalist and whose client targets children with harassment domains leads the highest education governance body in the same county where the SLAPP suit was filed. This is not evidence of her involvement — it is the social structure that makes local accountability nearly impossible. When the Saginaw County community evaluates complaints about Philip Ellison, his wife presides over its educational leadership.

Source: Saginaw ISD Board Recognition (2026) — lists Dr. Katherine Ellison as President (2021–2027), Lisa Hubbard as VP (2023–2029).

Sources: Michigan Resident Database (voter records) · Hemlock Public Schools · Saginaw ISD · Saginaw ISD Leadership · Ellison v. Scripps complaint

Source: CompaniesMI (B0703X) · CompaniesMI (E62024) · LARA Business Search

Domain Portfolio

The shift to privacy-shielded WHOIS in 2022 occurred after Lindke’s Through My Eyes activities escalated and became the subject of federal litigation.

Quagmire Solutions Client Identification

Ellison’s bios describe Quagmire Solutions’ clients as “local merchants, Internet service companies, and a major regional newspaper owned by an international outfit.”

The ISP client connection matters: If Quagmire Solutions designed websites for ISPs in the Hemlock area, Ellison has historical technical knowledge of the ISP infrastructure — not just as a customer, but as a consultant who worked on their systems.

Source: AboutUs.com archive — “Welcome - Web Design, Communications, Technology :: Serving Saginaw and Midland, Michigan, Quagmire Solutions, LLC is an Internet business specializing in web design, communications, and technology.”

FOIAworks — The FOIA Platform With No Privacy Policy

See full analysis: FOIAworks Honeypot

Quagmire Solutions LLC operates FOIAworks.com from 4522 West Higgins Lake Drive, Roscommon, MI 48653 — a 1,500 sq ft commercial office on 0.40 acres on the western shoreline of Higgins Lake. The property is a former Lake Bank branch with a drive-through window, three offices, a large open meeting space, and a bank vault. It was auctioned as bank-owned property (opening bid $7,500), later used as a real estate office, and sold for $150,000 on November 7, 2024 (MLS# 201830608). Ellison litigates extensively for Higgins Lake property owners through CHiLLL v. Roscommon County.

The platform collects user identities, FOIA request content, government correspondence, and responsive documents. Its /privacy/ URL returns 404 Not Found (verified October 6, 2026).

The Domain Registration Campaign

See full analysis: Domain Registrations

Three domains targeting PPO holders — including a minor child — registered within 30 minutes on September 9, 2025, via the same GoDaddy account infrastructure. IP address 162.247.150.54 (Ellison’s office IP, documented in PACER ECF No. 175-4) “appears in the domain registration chain” (Clutch Justice, May 16, 2026).

The Gronda Partnership

Matthew E. Gronda (Gronda PLC, Saginaw) is Ellison’s co-counsel across multiple matters:

The Gronda partnership matters because: (1) they were jointly sanctioned $73,752.45 for pressing frivolous claims; (2) they continue to work together on class actions after the sanctions were affirmed and cert was denied; (3) the same partnership approach — aggressive filing, overly broad theories, persistent motions after adverse rulings — is visible across the portfolio.

Source: Garcia cert petition (SCOTUS No. 23-404) · Taylor v. City of Saginaw docket · MLive, Nov 2025

The Financial Architecture

Per Clutch Justice, May 11, 2026:

“The financial architecture of the Lindke litigation matters because it explains the motive. The federal civil rights cases… pursued claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against St. Clair County officials for enforcing PPO orders that allegedly violated Lindke’s First Amendment rights.”

“Fee awards in successful civil rights litigation under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The SLAPP suit silences the journalist who documented the conduct underlying the PPO → which undermines the PPO → which supports the federal challenge to the PPO statute → which generates § 1988 attorney’s fees for Ellison.

This structure collapsed when Ellison withdrew from the Lindke federal cases on April 23, 2026 (the same day Lindke was booked in St. Clair County), and the case was dismissed with prejudice on May 6, 2026.

Sanctions History

Full analysis: $73,752.45: Federal Sanctions Against Philip L. Ellison

Garcia v. Title Check LLC (Sixth Circuit, Case No. 22-1574)

The Sixth Circuit found: “Their argument that Title Check engaged in extortion and wire fraud under RICO by charging a buyer’s premium to the auction price was unreasonable on its face.”

Source: Sixth Circuit opinion (GovInfo) · SCOTUS cert petition

Ellison v. JP Morgan Chase Bank (E.D. Mich., Case No. 13-13121)

Ellison lost his own home to foreclosure in Macomb County. Chase foreclosed; sheriff’s sale September 8, 2011; Ellison failed to redeem by March 2012. He then filed a pro se $7.35 million lawsuit alleging § 1983 violations, § 1985(3) conspiracy, mail fraud, and IIED. All claims dismissed with prejudice (October 31, 2013).

He subsequently built his entire practice around representing OTHER foreclosure victims.

Source: GovInfo · vLex

Fakhreddine v. Sabree (E.D. Mich., Case No. 2:21-cv-12250)

On August 4, 2026, the Eastern District of Michigan sanctioned Ellison $1,000 for baselessly accusing opposing counsel of an ethical violation — then refusing to retract the accusation after the court pointed out it was meritless. The court found he was “either carelessly looking over the record or intentionally misrepresenting the chain of events to the Court.”

Combined federal sanctions: $74,752.45 across two cases.

Source: Fakhreddine v. Sabree (Midpage) — Full analysis: $74,752.45 in Federal Sanctions

AGC Investigation

Source: Clutch Justice, May 9, 2026

The Void Lawsuit

The SLAPP suit (25-2441-CZ) was filed in violation of the federal bankruptcy automatic stay under 11 U.S.C. § 362(a). Under Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U.S. 433 (1940), proceedings conducted in violation of the automatic stay are void ab initio. Ellison never sought relief from the stay in the Western District.

Per Clutch Justice, May 31, 2026: “Every act taken in the proceeding has been void from inception.”

Nine months of litigation — including a coercive stipulated order obtained while the defendant was pro se, four motions to strike, a fabricated witness, a false representation about an AGC complaint, and a COA sanctions motion — were conducted in a case that was void from filing.

Ellison Withdrew — Then What Happened

The Full Case List

Sources

• Outside Legal Counsel PLC: olcplc.com/public/profile-ellison
• michigansupremecourtattorney.com: Meet Attorney Ellison
• LinkedIn: Philip L. Ellison
• Whoxy: olcplc.com WHOIS history
• LSSU 2005 Commencement: doczz.net
• CompaniesMI: Quagmire Solutions · South Brennan Property
• michigan.land: Philip Ellison addresses
• GovInfo: Garcia sanctions (6th Cir.) · Ellison v. Chase (E.D. Mich.)
• SCOTUS: Cert petition 23-404
• Times Herald: Lindke sentenced Nov 2021 · What to know about Lindke
• Clutch Justice: Anatomy of a Litigation Scheme · The Court That Knew · UPEPA Judicial Estoppel · Show Cause Retaliation · Notary Conflict · PPO Documentation Problem · Issue 009
• Docket Nexus: Ellison v. Scripps
• Michigan Lawyers Weekly: Saginaw courts cellphone ban
• Erin Marie Miller Substack: Miller v MDHHS update