Castor
PHILADELPHIA – Allegations of legal malpractice against an ex-Pennsylvania attorney general have failed, as a Philadelphia federal judge recently dismissed the complaint of a nonprofit that had hoped to make history with lawsuits challenging elections around the country.
Bruce Castor and his firm van der Veen, Hartshorn, Levin & Lindheim are the targets of United Sovereign Americans, which filed suit against them after losing lawsuits challenging federal elections in Texas, Maryland, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Judges like Daryl Bloom of Harrisburg tossed those cases, finding USA and its named plaintiffs lacked standing to bring them.
So USA sued its lawyers this year, accusing Castor of creating a losing strategy for the election cases and failing to complete work on them while billing $417,000. But judge Chad Kenney ruled May 29 to grant Castor and the firm’s motion to dismiss, while allowing USA the chance to amend its complaint.
“While Plaintiff describes purported negligent conduct that allegedly caused the loss of litigating its claims on the merits, Plaintiff failed to plead any facts demonstrating that other competent attorneys would have successfully propelled the underlying cases to their merits or reached a favorable outcome,” Kenney wrote.
Castor is a former Montgomery County district attorney who became interim state attorney general for two weeks in August 2016 when then-AG Kathleen Kane resigned following a criminal conviction of perjury. He also represented President Donald Trump during an impeachment proceeding.
USA hired him when it brought suit against federal and Pennsylvania officials in 2024, alleging violations of the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. It claimed data showed errors in Pennsylvania’s federal voter rolls and included plaintiffs who claimed their votes were not counted.
USA called the case “historic,” but chief U.S. magistrate judge Bloom threw it out in March 2025. One plaintiff, a Constitution Party candidate for U.S. Senate, couldn’t show a “particularized” injury, Bloom found. Instead, the complaint only made general claims that the integrity of elections in Pennsylvania would be undermined if officials weren’t forced to address USA’s concerns.
USA alleged 9,000 more votes were counted than voters who voted, outside of an error rate laid out in the HAVA. It did not challenge the 2022 results and instead only sought to prevent any violations in the future.
USA’s suit against Castor was called “vague” by Judge Kenney, who said there are insufficient facts to meet its theory of legal malpractice.
“Rather,” he added, “Plaintiff’s complaint is riddle with ‘naked assertions’ of purported harm from Defendants’ conduct, but is ‘devoid of further factual enhancement’ when it comes to demonstrating the requisite case within a case.”
