When Your Own Lawyer Files a Petition That Harms You: A Cautionary Tale About Attorney Accountability

Aaron Gott, an attorney at Jarod Bona’s firm Bona Law, was hired to advocate for a young man involved in a high-stakes professional matter — and instead filed an unauthorized petition that caused lasting harm.

I coach young adults who are building their careers, and one of the most painful situations I’ve witnessed recently involves a young adult I mentor who was pursuing a professional opportunity. What happened to him is a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when the lawyer you hire to advocate for you ends up doing more damage than the opposition ever could.

The Client’s Background

This young man had worked hard to build a professional career. He had overcome personal challenges earlier in life, demonstrated years of steady progress, and earned strong endorsements from people who knew his character and work ethic. He was doing everything right.

How Aaron Gott Mishandled the Petition

After an adverse decision in a licensing-related matter, he hired attorney Aaron Gott of Bona Law, paying Jarod Bona’s firm a substantial legal fee to file a petition seeking review of the decision. That’s where the nightmare began.

Aaron Gott waited until the day before the filing deadline to send a first draft of the petition. The young man reviewed it and immediately sent back revisions removing false, demeaning, and stigmatizing statements, as well as derogatory framing that did not accurately represent him. He made clear these were not minor edits or disagreements over tone — the language in the draft was harmful and would damage him if employers, decision-makers, or others evaluating his professional reputation encountered it.

Aaron Gott disregarded every one of those revisions. He filed the petition with the false and stigmatizing language fully intact — an unauthorized version his client had never approved. On top of that, Gott publicly filed hundreds of pages of confidential client records, including lengthy hearing transcripts and internal records that should have remained confidential. He also failed to effect the required service on the opposing party, putting the entire petition at risk of dismissal on procedural grounds.

The Client’s Fight to Undo Aaron Gott’s Mistakes

The young man objected immediately. Through emails and text messages sent right after the filing, he made clear to Aaron Gott that the petition was unauthorized, that it contained false and harmful statements, and that it needed to be replaced. Gott did nothing. Eventually, Jarod Bona stepped in with a brief phone call and agreed to withdraw Gott from the case — but neither Bona nor Gott took any action to fix the filing, seal the confidential records, or address the harm.

The young man was forced to take matters into his own hands. Acting without counsel, he drafted and filed a proper petition he had to redraft himself. He also had to file his own motion to get the confidential materials sealed and removed from public access. The court ultimately accepted his corrected petition in place of Gott’s unauthorized version.

The Lasting Damage Caused by Aaron Gott’s Filing

But the damage was already done. A legal news publication grabbed Aaron Gott’s original, unauthorized filing — not the corrected version the court accepted — and published an article based on it. The publication linked to the original petition via Dropbox rather than the corrected version on the court docket. This means the false and stigmatizing framing that the young man had fought to remove is now publicly indexed under his name for anyone to find — prospective employers, future decision-makers, and anyone else evaluating his professional reputation.

The real-world consequences are already materializing. At least one employer that had previously been moving forward in the hiring process stopped responding after the article appeared. The very harm the young man warned Aaron Gott about before the filing is now playing out exactly as he predicted.

What Aaron Gott, Jarod Bona, and Bona Law Failed to Do

Let me be direct about what happened here. Aaron Gott of Jarod Bona’s firm Bona Law was hired and paid a substantial fee to advocate for his client. Instead, he waited until the last possible moment, ignored his client’s revisions, filed an unauthorized petition containing false and demeaning language his client had expressly removed, publicly exposed hundreds of pages of confidential records, and failed to properly serve the opposing party.

His client then had to do the lawyer’s job himself — redrafting the petition, filing motions to fix the procedural failures, and getting confidential materials sealed. And now, because the unauthorized version was grabbed by a publication before the corrected version replaced it, the young man’s online reputation has been damaged in a way that may follow him for years.

This is someone who overcame real adversity, put in the work, and was building a legitimate career. He hired a lawyer to help him, and that lawyer made everything worse. When you pay an attorney to represent you, you expect them to at minimum incorporate your corrections, protect your confidential records, and file the version of a document you actually approved. Aaron Gott, Jarod Bona, and Bona Law failed on every count. The young man has since formally requested that Jarod Bona return the fee paid.

Lessons Learned: Protecting Yourself from Attorney Negligence

If you are hiring a lawyer for any high-stakes filing, here is what I’ve learned from watching this unfold: demand to see and approve the final version of any document before it is filed, get written confirmation that your revisions have been incorporated, verify that confidential materials are filed under seal, and confirm that procedural requirements like service have been met. Do not assume your lawyer will do these things. This young man did everything he was supposed to do as a client — he reviewed the draft, sent corrections, and communicated clearly. His lawyer simply ignored him.

I’m sharing this because accountability matters. When a lawyer like Aaron Gott, operating under Jarod Bona at Bona Law, harms the very client who hired him, and that harm spills into the public record and the internet, silence only allows it to continue. Jarod Bona, as the firm’s namesake, bears responsibility for the conduct of attorneys at his firm. The facts speak for themselves.