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Nature of Suit Code: 950
Nature of Suit: Constitutionality of State Statutes
Cause of Action: 

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NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 19a0405n.06

No. 18-2393

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

ROBERT DAVIS and D. ETTA WILCOXON,

Plaintiffs,

ANDREW A. PATERSON, JR.,

Appellant,

v.

DETROIT DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT

AUTHORITY and DETROIT BROWNFIELD

REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY,

Defendants-Appellees.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE EASTERN 

DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

BEFORE: SUTTON, GRIFFIN, and READLER, Circuit Judges.

GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge.

As the French proverb goes, “[i]f you’ve a good case, try to compromise; if a bad one, take 

it into court.” H.L. Mencken, A New Dictionary of Quotations 665 (19th prtg. 2001). Plaintiffs 

Robert Davis and Etta Wilcoxon followed the latter part of that advice before later abandoning 

their case. But their attorney, appellant Andrew Paterson, went too far. He pursued two frivolous 

claims and one frivolous motion, necessitating unnecessary legal fees for defendants Detroit 

Downtown Development Authority and Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority. Both 

defendants moved the district court to sanction Paterson under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, and the district 

court did. Paterson now appeals that decision. We affirm. 

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I.

In 2017, after spending nearly 40 years in the suburbs, the Detroit Pistons prepared to return 

to Detroit. Then Davis and Wilcoxon sued to stop the move. They claimed, among other things, 

that the Development Authority had (1) violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt 

Organizations Act (“RICO”) by scheming to defraud taxpayers into funding construction of Little 

Caesars Arena (the stadium where the Pistons planned to play) and (2) deprived Davis of 

procedural due process by refusing to give him a copy of a document relating to the stadium’s 

financing. 

The primary legal dispute between the parties did not last long; one month in, Davis and 

Wilcoxon voluntarily dismissed the case. 

But several satellite claims over sanctions developed and continued well after the dismissal. 

One such dispute unfolded after Paterson filed an emergency motion seeking a temporary 

restraining order. Defendants filed a joint response to that motion. And Paterson filed a motion 

to strike the response, claiming it exceeded the page limit. It did not. He had factored in the cover 

page, table of authorities, table of contents, and questions presented—sections that, under the 

Eastern District of Michigan’s Local Rules, did not count toward the page limit. See E.D. Mich. 

LR 7.1. So defendants moved for sanctions, calling out Paterson’s “fuzzy math” and arguing that 

the motion to strike was “beyond absurd” and that the emergency motion itself was also patently 

meritless. 

Another satellite sanctions dispute arose shortly after Davis and Wilcoxon dismissed the 

case. Defendants thought the lawsuit was frivolous, so they filed a motion seeking sanctions for 

having to defend against it. 

The district court granted both motions in part. It ruled that the motion to strike was 

“clearly without merit” and that Paterson had “needlessly obstructed” the case. It also determined

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that the RICO claim and procedural-due-process claim were frivolous. But it saw the emergency 

motion as no more than “zealous advocacy,” and it thought that some claims were not so obviously 

frivolous that they warranted punishment. For these reasons, the court imposed $13,506.00 in 

sanctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1927. Because § 1927 applies to attorneys, not the parties they 

represent, the district court ordered Paterson to pay the award. This appeal followed. 

II.

We review a district court’s award of § 1927 sanctions for an abuse of discretion. Green 

v. City of Southfield, 925 F.3d 281, 286 (6th Cir. 2019). That occurs when the court “applies the 

wrong legal standard, misapplies the correct legal standard, or relies on clearly erroneous findings 

of fact.” Hall v. Liberty Life Assurance Co. of Boston, 595 F.3d 270, 275 (6th Cir. 2010) (citation 

omitted). Normally, we analyze an appellant’s arguments by examining the legal reasons he offers 

to support his position and explaining why they are sufficient or insufficient—persuasive or 

unpersuasive. 

But this is not a normal case. Here, Paterson does not give us reasons; he gives us 

conclusions. For example, he says that “the claims as pl[eaded] were not frivolous” and that “[t]he 

district court’s finding that certain claims were frivolous [wa]s simply misplaced.” Yet he never 

tells us why that’s so. He also asserts that defendants could obtain sanctions for having to file a 

motion to dismiss the complaint and a response to his motion to strike, but nothing else. Yet he 

never explains why the district court erred when it also accounted for other filings, including a 

reply brief defendants filed as part of the motion-to-dismiss volley and the two sanctions motions 

themselves. All he claims is that the district court told defendants they could recover “the fees and 

costs incurred in responding to the [frivolous] claims . . . in the amended complaint and the motion 

to strike,” and that some of the recovered fees fell outside that category. But nowhere does he 

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specify how the district court’s interpretation of its own order amounted to the use of an erroneous 

legal standard, the improper application of the right one, or a clearly erroneous factual finding.

Paterson quickly runs out of conclusions, so he shifts to misrepresentations. He claims that 

one of the law firms representing defendants double billed them, which he argues led to a double 

recovery when the district court awarded sanctions to compensate them for the attorney’s fees his 

frivolous tactics created. Indeed, he asserts that “[t]here is no plausible explanation” that justifies 

billing defendants separately for the same legal work. But such an explanation exists, and 

defendants provided it to the district court: they asked the firm “to split the billing of time spent 

on a task equally between” them. That meant that if counsel spent two hours on a court appearance, 

each defendant received a bill for one hour of that time. Paterson further asserts that one law firm 

representing defendants replaced the other, “presumably due to [] incompetence or lack of 

expertise or inexperience.” This change, he suggests, should have prevented defendants from 

obtaining sanctions to compensate them for any time that the original firm billed. But no 

substitution occurred; both firms worked in tandem for much of the case—including every filing 

the sanctions award reimbursed defendants for. Paterson also asks us to limit any award to the 

equivalent of “no more than 3 hours!” of defense counsel’s time rather than the 50.8 hours the 

district court credited. We should do so, he asserts, because only three pages of defendants’ motion 

to dismiss—which he says spanned 39 pages—addressed the claims that the district court found 

to be frivolous. But the motion was 25 pages, and it was this very type of misrepresentation that 

the district court sanctioned Paterson for making. 

Once the misrepresentations are rejected, Paterson turns to victim blaming. Sanctions were 

improper, he contends, because it was defendants who filed “a multitude of frivolous motions.” 

He even accuses defense counsel of violating the Eastern District of Michigan’s Civility Principles. 

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This appeal, then, is full of legally meaningless attacks and diversions. Nowhere does 

Paterson provide us with any of what we need to analyze whether the district court erred in 

sanctioning him and, if not, whether the award was excessive. A party may not present a skeletal 

argument, leaving the court to put flesh on its bones, United States v. Hendrickson, 822 F.3d 812, 

829 n.10 (6th Cir. 2016), and here Paterson has not presented any argument at all—much less a 

skeletal one. 

To be sure, Paterson does make two points that are closer to fully formed arguments. First, 

he argues that sanctions are inappropriate because he stopped pursuing the frivolous RICO and 

procedural-due-process claims when plaintiffs dismissed their complaint. But he provides no legal 

authority suggesting that an attorney may use frivolous legal positions to run up legal costs for an

opposing party, without rebuke, so long as he abandons them before a court can reject them. And 

§ 1927 applies to attorneys who multiply legal proceedings unreasonably or vexatiously. What 

matters, then, is the multiplication of the proceedings, not any later voluntary reduction of them. 

Second, Paterson argues that sanctions are also inappropriate because he did not act in bad 

faith—something that’s necessary for a court to use its inherent powers to sanction a party. 

See Roadway Express, Inc. v. Piper, 447 U.S. 752, 767 (1980). But the district court said it was 

“stop[ping] short of finding any bad faith” and awarding sanctions under its inherent authority. 

Instead, the court sanctioned Paterson under § 1927, alone, which does not require a finding of bad 

faith, Dixon v. Clem, 492 F.3d 665, 679 (6th Cir. 2007). So by raising this argument, he is 

complaining about something that did not occur. 

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III.

To warrant reversal, Paterson needed to show that the district court used the wrong legal 

standard, misapplied the right one, or made clearly erroneous factual finding. He has not done so. 

Therefore, we affirm the sanctions award. 

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