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 ...

It is well settled that a governmental entity may be a RICO plaintiff but not a RICO defendant, even though that means it is a ‛person“ for some purposes and not others. See Joseph, Civil RICO: A Definitive Guide § 11(A) (2d ed. 2000). In an appeal arising out of the conviction of former Illinois Governor George Ryan, United States v. Warner, 2 ...

The plaintiffs' lawyer in In re Ski Train Fire in Kaprun Austria, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60229 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 16, 2007), filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He reported $ 13.6 million in outstanding debts. Among the listed creditors were two expert witnesses in the Ski Train case whom he owed, respectively, $75,000 and $3 million. The ‛single most sig ...