A legal filing submitted on Tuesday night by counsel for Dr. Carlon Colker contained excerpts from Janel Grant’s medical records without redactions, which were initially viewable on the public docket, prompting the judge to order the filing sealed on Wednesday.
Colker is suing Grant’s attorney, Ann Callis, and her law firm, alleging they made false and damaging statements about his medical treatment of Grant, who is a former WWE employee. Grant alleges that she was given unidentified pills and I.V. infusions at Peak Wellness, Colker’s Greenwich-based clinic. Colker denies the allegations.
Colker’s defamation case against Grant’s lawyer is one of several legal matters stemming from the alleged sexual misconduct scandal that led Vince McMahon to resign from WWE twice.
Callis serves as counsel for Grant in her federal sex trafficking lawsuit against McMahon and WWE. Colker is not a defendant in that case and is not accused of sexual misconduct, but he is mentioned in the lawsuit as a doctor whom McMahon allegedly directed Grant to seek treatment with.
Callis also represents Grant in a related pre-suit legal action in Connecticut state court, where Colker and his clinic are defendants. Grant is seeking evidence from Colker and his staff in that case.
In the defamation case, Colker’s attorneys included portions of medical records from Grant’s visits to Peak Wellness in their opposition to Callis’s motion to dismiss the suit. The doctor’s legal team cited the records to argue that Callis’s statements about Colker were false and defamatory.
On Wednesday, Judge Sarah F. Russell ordered Colker’s initial filing—submitted the night before—sealed after determining that it included private medical details and Grant’s birthdate. Medical information and birthdates are often protected from public disclosure in legal cases. Grant’s medical records, in particular, had been previously submitted by Callis’s counsel along with a request to file them under seal—meaning they were accessible to the court and the parties, but were not viewable by the public and would remain sealed unless the judge later denied the request.
Later Wednesday, Colker’s legal team filed a redacted version of the brief, with the medical record excerpts blacked out. It’s unclear whether the initial public filing of Grant’s medical information was intentional or accidental. Colker’s attorneys from Brito PLLC did not respond to multiple requests for comment. One of our questions specifically asked whether the initial filing without redactions was intentional.
Colker’s attorneys include Alejandro Brito, who also represents U.S. President Donald Trump in high-profile defamation lawsuits against ABC News and the more recent case against The Wall Street Journal.
Representatives for Grant declined to comment for this report.
Unintentional filing errors of this kind, while serious, are not unheard of in federal court, particularly within the electronic case filing system. Grant’s representatives, though, have frequently described McMahon’s conduct as retaliatory and intimidating, and have characterized actions in the various legal proceedings—including those involving Colker—as part of a pattern of retaliation.
Grant’s Peak Wellness records are also at issue in her case against Colker in Connecticut Superior Court. Grant claims Colker has yet to fully provide her with all her records from her treatment at the clinic. Colker says he has already turned them over multiple times. Earlier this month, a judge directed both sides to attempt to resolve the dispute and ruled that Grant may also seek communications records involving Colker, his clinic, McMahon, or WWE.
This appears to be the first time Grant’s medical records were publicly viewable in any court proceeding, albeit briefly. The document was available via the federal court’s filing system, but access has since been removed.
Colker filed the defamation case against Callis in May. In his latest filing, he argues the lawsuit should proceed because Callis knowingly spread false information about his treatment of Grant, pointing to Callis’s comments in an October 2024 press release and other statements to the media.
Callis previously moved to dismiss the case in July, arguing that it fails to meet the legal threshold for defamation, particularly because, she says, Colker is a public figure. Defamation cases involving public figures must meet a higher legal standard: “actual malice,” meaning the defendant had to either knowingly lie or act with reckless disregard for the truth. Callis argues her statements were based on Grant’s own experiences and condition.
In response this week, Colker challenged the claim that he is a public figure and hinted he may argue that he is a private individual, a status that would make it easier to pursue defamation claims. But even if he were deemed a public figure, Colker argued, Callis’s statements meet the “actual malice” standard. He says she disregarded Grant’s medical records, which were available to her. According to Colker, those records contradict Callis’s public statements. He also claims that her background as a judge and experienced attorney makes her conduct especially egregious.
Colker’s attorneys wrote Tuesday that “even a cursory review of the medical records supports the notion of patient-initiated, informed, and consented treatments of Grant” by Colker and his clinic. The brief then referenced embedded excerpts that detailed her visits, which have since been redacted in the updated version following the court’s sealing order.
“[Colker’s] response to the Motion to Dismiss… contains a non-party’s [Grant’s] birth date,” which Judge Russell noted is a violation of the rules of civil procedure that govern private information in court filings. She added that Colker’s brief also contained “non-party [Grant’s] medical records that are the subject of an unopposed Motion to Seal,” referencing Callis’s side’s earlier request to keep those records from public view.
“Given these circumstances,” Russell’s order continued, “the court finds clear and compelling reasons to seal [Colker’s] response pending the filing of a redacted response,” which he filed later that day.
