Plaintiff’s counsel in Wade v. Soo Line R.R., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 20617 (7th Cir. Aug. 29, 2007), acted sanctionably — withholding damaging medical records and perhaps stealing some of them back from defense counsel at a deposition. The District Court imposed $110,000 in sanctions, an amount equivalent to the defendant’s fees and costs for the entire ...

A new article analyzing the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, which has been cited in more than 980 decisions since it was decided on May 21, 2007, has been posted today on the Recent Articles page (title: "Supreme Court Rewrites Pleading Rules"). The article entitled "Internet and Email Evidence" has been updated as of September ...

28 U.S.C. § 1927 provides: Any attorney or other person admitted to conduct cases in any court of the United States or any Territory thereof who so multiplies the proceedings in any case unreasonably and vexatiously may be required by the court to satisfy personally the excess costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees reasonably incurred because of s ...

In a personal injury action governed by Alabama law, Long v. Raymond Corp., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 20493 (11th Cir. Aug. 21, 2007), the losing plaintiff argued on appeal that the district court erroneously applied Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (and thus federal Daubert standards), rather than Rule 601 (and more lenient Alabama rules of competency), when i ...

On August 21, 2007, a federal judge in St. Louis imposed sanctions on a party for entering into a settlement agreement that precluded a third party witness from testifying at trial (see our post of August 25, 2007). Two days later, on August 23, District Judge Loretta A. Preska of the Southern District of New York imposed a formal reprimand and attorneys' fe ...

The moving defendant in Tojas v. Theobald, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62321 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 23, 2007), did not file his Rule 11 motion until after he had prevailed on the merits at trial. At that point, it was impossible for the plaintiff to withdraw any allegedly frivolous claims. That meant that the plaintiff could not, by definition, take advantage of the 21-d ...

There is some confusion in the case law as to whether there is a split in the Circuits concerning whether § 1927 authorizes the imposition of sanctions on pro se litigants, as reflected, e.g., in the recent decision in Wallace v. Kelley, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56472 (D. Neb. Aug. 1, 2007), which (i) cites Alexander v. United States, 121 F.3 ...

If enacted by Congress, Federal Rule of Evidence 502 will define the scope of subject matter waiver of both attorney-client privilege and work product protection. Unless and until that happens, the common law governs. One traditional event triggering a waiver is a party’s reliance on advice of counsel as a defense. The Federal Circuit explored the scope of such ...

It is difficult to get a civil securities fraud case to trial, but there are gems to pluck from the criminal cases, which are tried. In criminal securities fraud prosecutions, a conscious avoidance instruction "permits a jury to find that a defendant had culpable knowledge of a fact when the evidence shows that the defendant intentionally avoided confirming the fac ...

The plaintiff in Synergetics, Inc. v. Hurst, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61286 (E.D. Mo. Aug. 21, 2007), had meritorious claims against three former employees who, according to the judge and the jury, cheated the plaintiff and then lied about it under oath. The plaintiff brought two suits — the instant one against Hurst and McGowan, and a separate one against Lu ...