Case No.

1:23-cv-01513-RMR-NRN Document 11 filed 08/22/23 USDC Colorado pg 1 of 5

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO

Civil Action No. 23-cv-01513-RMR-NRN

GS HOLISTIC, LLC,

Plaintiff,

v.

VAPORTOKE INC d/b/a COLORADO VAPE & TOKE, and

MONJED ABED,

Defendants.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE

N. REID NEUREITER
United States Magistrate Judge

It is hereby ORDERED that Plaintiff’s counsel and a business representative of

the Plaintiff shall appear in person on Monday, September 26, 2023 at 2:30 p.m., at the

Byron Rogers United States Courthouse, Courtroom C-203, 1929 Stout Street, Denver,

Colorado, 80294 to show cause why all the trademark cases filed in this District by GS

Holistic, LLC since June 15, 2023 (the first case being this case) should not be stayed

pending submission of a written verification, under oath, that the Plaintiff or Plaintiff’s

representative has engaged in good faith, meaningful, negotiations to resolve the

instant dispute with each specific defendant, and that those negotiations have failed.

The filing of fifty-plus nearly identical copy-cat lawsuits (all by a single lawyer),

presumably without any pre-suit effort at resolution, imposes an extraordinary burden on

the judicial system and raises legitimate questions about whether the lawsuits are being

brought in good faith or are, instead, a means of litigation blackmail filed by a trademark
Case No. 1:23-cv-01513-RMR-NRN Document 11 filed 08/22/23 USDC Colorado pg 2 of 5

“troll.” See Malibu Media, LLC v. Doe, No. 15 Civ. 4369 (AKH), 2015 WL 4092417

(S.D.N.Y. July 6, 2015) (explaining, in the adult-film copyright context, that the

“paradigmatic troll plays a numbers game in which it targets hundreds or thousands of

defendants, seeking quick settlements priced just low enough that it is less expensive

for the defendant to pay the troll rather than defend the claim”) (quoting Matthew Sag,

Copyright Trolling, An Empirical Study, 100 Iowa L. Rev. 1105, 1108 (2015)); McDermott

v. Monday Monday, LLC, 17cv9230 (DLC), 2018 WL 5312903, at *2 (Oct. 26, 2018) (in

photography copyright context, explaining that “copyright troll” is “more focused on the

business of litigation than on selling a product or service or licensing their copyrights to

third parties to sell a product or service”).

For a single lawyer to bring more than fifty lawsuits within a short period of time

raises substantial doubt about the ability of Plaintiff and its Colorado counsel to actively

pursue these cases through the full litigation process. See Mondragon v. Nosrak LLC,

Case No. 19-cv-01437-CMA-NRN, 2020 WL 2395641 (describing situation of copyright

attorney sanctioned in part for filing an enormous volume of cases and being unable to

fulfill obligations to various courts). Indeed, soon after the issuance of the normal order

setting a scheduling conference (which is regular procedure in this court), in certain of

these cases, Plaintiff has moved to continue the scheduling conference and delay the

deadline for magistrate judge consent. See, e.g., GS Holistic, LLC v. Smokey Monkey 4

LLC, Case No. 23-cv-01846-RMR-NRN (Motion to Continue filed on August 9, 2023).

This creates suspicion that Plaintiff and its counsel lack the means or the desire to

actually pursue through the normal litigation process the many cases that have been

filed.

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A PACER search shows that Plaintiff is engaging in this litigation strategy

nationwide, apparently having recently filed more than 700 similar lawsuits in federal

courts around the country. Decisions arising from certain of these many cases tend to

suggest that some of these federal lawsuits may have been filed without adequate

investigation, without a good faith basis, or without a meaningful desire to litigate to

finality. See, e.g., GS Holistic, LLC v. Brother Pastor, LLC, Case No. 8:22-cv-2179-VMC-

TGW, 2023 WL 4082027 (M.D. Florida June 20, 2023) (dismissing case and awarding

sanctions against GS Holistic’ s counsel for continuing to pursue case despite multiple

warnings that trademark infringement allegations were meritless); GS Holistic, LLC v.

Kinder Combs 7 LLC, Case No. 3:22-cv-1206-TJC-LLL, 2023 WL 5104701 (M.D. Fla.

August 9, 2023) (dismissing six trademark cases filed by GS Holistic for failure to timely

file case management report or timely move for clerk’s default or default judgment).

GS Holistic has apparently filed more than 140 near identical cases in the Central

District of California alone since July 1, 2022. GS Holistic’ s inability to live up to its

obligations as a plaintiff in those Central District of California federal lawsuits has

resulted in a number of those cases being dismissed as a sanction, with more sanctions

potentially on the way. See GS Holistic, LLC v. TM Smoke Shop, Inc., Case No. SA CV

23-380 PA (JEMx), 2023 WL 3741621 (C.D. Cal. May 30, 2023). The court there

described the many problems seen with GS Holistic’ s slapdash, sue-first, scattershot

approach to dealing with alleged trademark infringers:

This is just one of many cases in which Plaintiff’s counsel has failed to
comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and failed to provide an
adequate explanation for that failure. These consistent failures, which cause
the Court to have to monitor the progress of Plaintiff’s counsel’s cases, issue
Orders to Show Cause, track and review Plaintiff’s counsel’s Responses,
and manage the Court’s docket, unnecessarily tax the Court’s limited

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resources. Indeed, the Court has previously admonished Plaintiff and

Plaintiff’s counsel regarding its prior violations of the Local Rules and the
Court’s Orders.

The Court has also dismissed other actions filed by Plaintiff as a result of
Plaintiff’s failures to timely serve defendants under Rule 4(m), Plaintiff’s
insufficient efforts to diligently prosecute its actions, and Plaintiff’s
inadequate responses to orders to show cause. In GS Holistic, LLC v.
Crown Smoke & Vape, Inc., Case No. CV 22-6110 PA (MARx), for instance,
the Court repeatedly identified the procedural deficiencies in Plaintiff’s
filings and later ordered Plaintiff’s counsel to submit a Declaration stating
that he had reviewed the Local Rules. Despite these lesser sanctions,
Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s counsel continued to violate the Local Rules and
repeated some of the same filing errors the Court had repeatedly identified.
In that case, Plaintiff also failed to timely serve one of the defendants, and
the Court eventually dismissed the action after Plaintiff missed several
deadlines.

Id. at *1–2.
The filing of a lawsuit in federal court imposes burdens on the court system and

its staff. Where there is a legitimate basis for the suit and the plaintiff seeks to employ

the mechanism of the federal court for the fair and efficient resolution of a bona fide

legal dispute, the Court stands ready to play its appropriate role. But inundating the

District of Colorado with more than fifty, near-identical cases without any evidence of

pre-suit efforts at negotiation or mediation raises substantial questions about whether

Plaintiff is using the legal system in good faith.

This is not to suggest that Plaintiff’s claims lack merit or that, ultimately, Plaintiff

may not be able to prevail in these lawsuits. Courts have awarded substantial default

judgments in favor of GS Holistic in connection with some of these cases. See, e.g., GS

Holistic, LLC v. Smokers Cave, LLC, 2023 WL 4205826 (C.D. Cal. May 12, 2023)

(awarding $150,000 damages and $1,097 in costs in entering a default judgment in

favor of GS Holistic). Nevertheless, the significant burden imposed on the District of

Colorado by the filing of dozens of identical lawsuits militates in favor of requiring

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Plaintiff to demonstrate that it has at least attempted a non-litigation route for resolving

these disputes. The problems seen in the TM Smoke Shop case, cited above, will not

be tolerated in the District of Colorado.

Therefore, it is hereby ORDERED that Plaintiff’s counsel and a business

representative of the Plaintiff shall appear in person on September 26, 2023 at 2:30

p.m. to SHOW CAUSE why a general order should not be issued in each of these near-

identical trademark/unfair competition cases staying the cases pending submission of

verification that Plaintiff or its counsel has engaged in meaningful, in person, negotiation

with each defendant and that those efforts at negotiation have failed.

Dated: August 22, 2023

Denver, Colorado N. Reid Neureiter
United States Magistrate Judge