Carroll v. E One — civil — affirmance — Smith
Say you’re a lawyer who represented a litigant in district court, and you lost, and your client has decided to appeal, and a central issue in the appeal involves whether you did something wrong: should you handle the appeal yourself? Not in my view. No matter how sure you may be that you did not screw up, if the appeal will focus substantially on whether you screwed up, you’re the wrong one for the job.
In the last couple years there have been a few Third Circuit appeals where lawyers have not done as I suggest above, and it hasn’t gone well. Here’s a memorable one, an appeal from summary judgment against the client and over $28,000 in sanctions against the lawyer; the panel called the lawyer out by name throughout the opinion and flat affirmed.
Today, it happened again, and again it went badly for the side whose lawyer stayed on. The Third Circuit affirmed a district court’s award of over $127,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs after a voluntary dismissal with prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(2). The court recognized that attorneys’ fees and costs normally are not available after a voluntary dismissal with prejudice, but held that they may be awarded in extraordinary circumstances that were present here:
Exceptional circumstances include a litigant’s failure to perform a meaningful pre-suit investigation, as well as a repeated practice of bringing meritless claims and then dismissing them with prejudice after both the opposing party and the judicial system have incurred substantial costs. Because such exceptional circumstances are present in this case, the District Court’s award will be affirmed.
The opinion’s harshest language was directed at the fact that one client said that he learned that he was a plaintiff in the suit only after the firm emailed him, seemingly after the suit was filed: “Such an uninformed rush to the courthouse skirts the norms of proper legal practice in pursuit of the fruits of aggregation. It should not be condoned.”
What gives me pause me about today’s ruling is that, while the basis for the award was counsel‘s actions–including actions apparently taken without the clients’ knowledge, and actions in other cases on behalf of other clients–the ones on the hook for the six-figure award here, I’d think, are the clients.
Joining Smith were Hardiman and Roth. Arguing counsel were Joseph Cappelli of Bern & Partners (formerly Bern Cappelli) for the appellants and Jan Miller of St. Louis for the appellee.