Arizona justices say Hamadeh's lawyers lied, order him to pay fees

PHOENIX — Abe Hamadeh has been ordered to pay more than $42,000 in legal fees to Kris Mayes in his unsuccessful attempt to convince the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn his loss in the 2022 attorney general’s election.

In a new order Tuesday, Chief Justice Robert Brutinel said the award is appropriate because Hamadeh’s lawyers “misrepresented’’ information to the justices.

Brutinel said they did so in telling the justices he had sought a final, and appealable, order from a Mohave County judge who ruled the GOP candidate did not prove he outpolled Democrat Mayes in the November election.

The justices concluded Hamadeh’s lawyers acted prematurely and that they lied.

Brutinel said Hamadeh’s legal team told the justices they had “diligently sought’’ a final ruling from Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen, setting the stage for an appeal. That assertion was false, he said.

So there was no reason for Hamadeh to file any pleadings with the state’s high court, Brutinel said, as all of the claims he made that Jantzen erred in his decisions could have been presented to the state Court of Appeals.

That “unnecessarily expanded the proceeding and compelled respondents to incur the unnecessary expenses of filing their court-ordered responses,” the chief justice wrote.

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It isn’t just Mayes who will be reimbursed.

Brutinel said Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who was named as a defendant in Hamadeh’s bid to overturn the election results, is entitled to $12,921 in legal fees.

The justices said Hamadeh is ineligible to seek the special relief he wants directly from the Supreme Court, and told him to follow normal procedures and file “a proper appeal in the Court of Appeals.’’

Only after the appellate court has had its say — something that could take months — would the justices be willing to consider Hamadeh’s arguments.

Hamadeh contends Jantzen acted improperly in limiting the amount of time he had to prepare his legal arguments seeking to overturn his loss to Mayes. He said that denied his attorneys the ability to find evidence that some people legally entitled to vote did not have their ballots counted.

He also argues that more time would have enabled his legal team to prove there were situations where tabulators reported an “undervote’’ in the race for attorney general — essentially, that the voter had skipped the race — but where an examination of the ballots would show people did make a choice. Given that Hamadeh outpolled Mayes among Election Day voters, Hamadeh said that could more than make up for his overall 280-vote deficit.