Sanctions

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In an opinion today, Judge Furman granted a motion for sanctions against the Department of Justice for failing to review and produce hundreds of relevant documents in the litigation over when a citizenship question could be included in the 2020 Census (see our previous coverage here).  The case centered on whether the inclusion of the citizenship question was a proper exercise of executive authority. The withheld documents provided evidence that the question was included to assist in political redistricting efforts, and that the stated justification (that the question was added to help enforce the Voting Rights Act) was pretextual.

While Judge Furman agreed that the conduct was sanctionable, he noted that the most appropriate remedy – judgment in favor of the plaintiffs – had already occurred:…
Continue Reading Judge Furman Sanctions DOJ in Census Citizenship Question Case

In an opinion today, Magistrate Judge Wang denied a motion for sanctions premised on (among other things) the “sheer volume” of objections during two depositions, including, in one instance, a deposition with an objection on approximately 80% of the transcript pages.

Judge Wang concluded that the number of objections alone was not enough, given that the objections were largely appropriate:…
Continue Reading Magistrate Judge Wang: “Sheer Volume” of Deposition Objections Not Enough for Sanctions

In an opinion today, Judge Woods concluded that sanctions were appropriate as against a plaintiff, referred to as ITM, that brought a claim without evidentiary support, even though the claim was eventually dropped.  ITM alleged that it incurred $350,000 in expenses advising the defendant about a certain corporate acquisition, but dropped the claim after discovery.   That didn’t solve the problem, as Judge Woods explained:…
Continue Reading Judge Woods: Belatedly Withdrawing A Baseless Claim Does Not Insulate a Litigant from Sanctions

Yesterday, Judge Rakoff sanctioned an attorney for an objector to the $3 billion Petrobras securities litigation settlement (see our full coverage of the Petrobras litigation here).  Judge Rakoff had approved the settlement over the objections, after which the objectors filed an appeal.  According to the class plaintiff, the appeals were part of an “extortionist agenda” to extract a monetary settlement in exchange for dismissing their appeals.

Judge Rakoff warned against the rise of frivolous objections to class settlements:…
Continue Reading Judge Rakoff Grants Sanctions for “Objector Extortion” in Proposed Class Action Settlement

In an opinion Tuesday, Judge Seibel lambasted, but ultimately did not sanction, attorneys in an insurance dispute who made evasive and false assertions in a Rule 56.1 statement submitted in opposition to summary judgment.  She found the statements lacked a “factual basis,” and were a “sham,” and added that the attorneys’ conduct “was entirely unbecoming of members of our profession.”  She nonetheless concluded “in light of the high standard for bad faith, and the caution with which courts should approach the question of bad faith,” not to award sanctions, for two reasons:…
Continue Reading Judge Seibel Nearly Sanctions Attorneys for “Sham” Responses to Rule 56.1 Opposition Statement

In a brief order Thursday, Judge Marrero imposed a sanction of $1,048.09 against a party that deliberately broke his individual rule requiring briefs be double-spaced:

At the March 24, 2017 hearing regarding plaintiff CafeX Communications’s (“CafeX”) Motion for a Preliminary Injunction (“Motion,” Dkt. No. 8.) the Court found that defendant Amazon Web Services, Inc. (“Amazon”)

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In an opinion yesterday, Judge Caproni warned Christopher Bandas, an attorney who serially files class action objections, about his apparent practice of attempting to use local counsel as a shield against sanctions, though she ultimately declined to sanction Mr. Bandas:

Bandas’ failure to provide any legitimate support for [the class objection] would be enough to

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In an opinion Monday, resolving “the latest in a long, tedious series of discovery disputes,” Judge Hellerstein chided a patent plaintiff, Intellectual Ventures, for having disclosed infringement contentions that were “discursive, disorganized, and, at times, confusing” and for repeatedly shifting positions about what it believed was the infringing conduct of the defendant, JP Morgan:

Intellectual

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In an opinion today, Judge Cote granted Tory Burch summary judgment in a case concerning knock-off merchandise.  The motion was deemed unopposed based the defendants’ misconduct, including spoliation and fabrication of evidence.  In a particularly notable passage, the opinion discloses that the Court ordered a forensic examination of the defendants’ opposition papers, and, from that examination, determined that those papers were served too late:…
Continue Reading Judge Cote Employs Forensic Examination to Determine Brief Was Served Too Late

In an opinion yesterday, Magistrate Judge Ellis sanctioned The Money Store and other related defendants for failing to preserve evidence held by a third party vendor, Fidelity National Foreclosure Solutions. The underlying class action accuses the defendants of improper debt collection practices relating to mortgage loans, and the plaintiff argued that evidence from a database created by Fidelity (referred to as the “New Invoice System”) was improperly lost. Calling to mind a similar opinion from Magistrate Judge Mass two years ago (see this post), Judge Ellis found that, since the defendants has the legal right and practical ability to direct Fidelity to preserve evidence, they were required to do so:…
Continue Reading Judge Ellis Sanctions Party for Failing to Preserve Evidence Held by Nonparty Vendor