The File That Was Not in the File

July 3, 2026

The Receipts · The Bar Record

The File That Was Not in the File

The State Bar of Georgia dismissed a grievance because no rebuttal was received. Then it admitted the rebuttal was received. It just wasn’t in the file.

What happened

On April 10, 2026, the Bar dismissed the grievance. The stated reason: no rebuttal had been received.

Eleven days later, on April 21, the Bar put the truth in writing. My February 3 and February 20 submissions had been received. Because they were labeled a “Supplemental Submission in Support of Grievance,” they were treated as unsolicited and were not added to the grievance file when the dismissal was decided.

So the dismissal was accurate about an empty file. The file was empty because the Bar emptied it.

Why it matters

A dismissal that says “no rebuttal received” is only true if no rebuttal was received. Two were. The Bar confirmed it in its own email. The premise of the dismissal was false the day it was written, and the people who wrote it are the same people who later admitted why.

The file was not in the file.

What the record says

The Bar’s own words, April 21: “You are correct that we received emails from you on February 3, 2026, and February 20, 2026.” Because the messages were labeled a “Supplemental Submission in Support of Grievance,” they were “not processed as rebuttals and were instead treated as unsolicited submissions.”

The consequence, in the Bar’s words: “your submissions were not added to the grievance file at that time. Accordingly, when Ms. Morrison reviewed the file, no rebuttal was present.” The materials “have now been added to the file.”

Now. Which means, on April 10, they were not.

What remains unanswered

Was the April 10 dismissal a complete-record decision, or not? If the rebuttals were missing when it issued, it was not. The Bar has never said so in writing. It corrected the filing cabinet and left the dismissal exactly where it was.

The File That Was Not in the File