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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

ALBERTO MARTINEZ, et al.,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al.,

Defendants,

and

MARY E. MCCLELLAN,

Respondent-Appellant.

____________________

IN RE: MARY E. MCCLELLAN,

Petitioner.

____________________

Appeals from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 09 C 5938 — John F. Grady, Elaine E. Bucklo, Judges.

____________________

ARGUED MARCH 30, 2016 — DECIDED MAY 23, 2016

____________________

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
2 Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The principal question presented 

by this appeal is whether an order by a district court imposing a sanction on a lawyer for misconduct in a case before 

the court can ever be appealed if the sanction lacks a monetary component.

As part of a lawsuit charging the City of Chicago and 

others with malicious prosecution and other torts, the plaintiffs sought by subpoena to discover documents lodged in 

the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. The lawyers representing the Office, who included Mary McClellan, the appellant, told the plaintiffs’ lawyers that the files they were 

looking for no longer existed. A year later, however, when 

Judge Grady, the presiding judge, ordered the Office to allow the plaintiffs’ lawyers to inspect 181 boxes of documents 

stored in a warehouse, the lawyers quickly found the documents they’d asked for—and moved the district court to 

sanction McClellan and her colleagues for obstructing the 

plaintiffs’ discovery by insisting that the documents the 

plaintiffs needed no longer existed.

Some months after the tort suit ended in the plaintiffs’

acceptance of an offer of judgment, the judge granted the 

motion for sanctions and ordered McClellan and the State’s 

Attorney’s Office to pay, as sanctions for what the judge 

concluded was indeed seriously obstructive conduct in discovery, the fees and costs that their misconduct had imposed 

on the plaintiffs. It fell to Judge Bucklo, who took over the 

case when Judge Grady retired in 2015, to calculate the dollar amount of the sanctions. She ordered McClellan and the 

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410 3

State’s Attorney’s Office to pay the plaintiffs a total of 

$35,522.94 in fees and costs.

Judge Grady had based his finding of attorney misconduct on both 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and the inherent authority of a 

federal court to punish attorney misconduct in a case before 

it. In the baroque language beloved of legislatures and 

courts, the statute provides that “any attorney ... in any 

court of the United States ... 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 

such conduct.” Federal judges can also sanction attorneys 

appearing before them for actions taken “in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.” Chambers v. 

NASCO Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45–46 (1991). Bad faith includes

“recklessly making a frivolous claim.” Mach v. Will County 

Sheriff, 580 F.3d 495, 501 (7th Cir. 2009); see also Egan v. 

Pineda, 808 F.3d 1180 (7th Cir. 2015). The judge could also 

have invoked in support of his ruling Fed. R. Civ. P. 

37(a)(5)(A), which authorizes the award of attorneys’ fees 

incurred as a result of discovery abuse.

The judge explained (record citations omitted) that

ASA [assistant state’s attorney] McClellan recklessly 

adhered to the position that the documents the plaintiffs 

sought did not exist. ... [T]he CCSAO [Cook County 

State’s Attorney’s Office, McClellan’s employer] initially 

took the position that, except for a few “special” cases, it 

destroys all misdemeanor case files immediately after trial. 

ASA McClellan first introduced [a] distinction between 

“jury” and “non-jury” misdemeanors in February 2013. 

The fact that McClellan did not acknowledge that the 

CCSAO had changed its position created unnecessary conCase: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
4 Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

fusion. On the other hand, at that point in the proceedings, 

it appears that both McClellan and Fallon [another assistant state’s attorney] were in the dark about the CCSAO’s 

actual policy. ... In response to [a] subpoena, the CCSAO 

disclosed for the first time that there were 31 boxes of misdemeanor files from the relevant year (2009), and 180 boxes of misdemeanor files, total. McClellan confidently stated 

at the April 3, 2013 hearing on the CCSAO’s motion to 

quash that these boxes did not contain materials for misdemeanor offenses concluded by bench trials. The most 

generous inference that we can draw from McClellan’s 

statement is that she did not speak with the custodian of 

those boxes before making this statement. If she had, she 

would have learned that they contained materials from 

misdemeanor bench trials. This is reckless conduct. She also recklessly overstated the amount of time and resources 

it would take to inspect the files, leading the court to order 

an unnecessary intermediate step to determine whether 

the plaintiffs’ proposed inspection was feasible. [She said]

“the amount of resources it’s going to take to pull 180 boxes and have them available to counsel is extraordinary.” 

[Told by Jared Kosoglad, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, that the inspection could be completed in an hour or two,] McClellan 

insisted that it could not be done in that amount of time 

and raised other argumentative objections. She continued 

to obstruct discovery at the inspection itself by refusing ...

requests for reasonable accommodations. The court overruled McClellan’s objections and, consistent with Mr. Kosoglad’s estimate, he and his colleagues found the documents within a matter of minutes.

The CCSAO produced 1,000 responsive documents in 

April and May 2013, contrary to McClellan’s assurances 

that the documents the plaintiffs sought did not exist. 

McClellan asserted a questionable privilege claim with respect to a subset of the relevant documents, which she 

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410 5

withdrew after plaintiffs moved to compel their production. Given the history of the case to that point, the plaintiffs’ subpoena seeking to inspect the original file was eminently reasonable. Nevertheless, McClellan continued to 

raise bogus objections, which the court overruled. The 

plaintiffs finally received all the documents that they were 

seeking on July 26, 2013, mercifully ending the CCSAO’s 

participation in this case. In sum, we conclude that McClellan’s conduct was reckless and undertaken in bad faith [a 

wordy formula for sanctionable conduct].

McClellan appealed to us, but before the appeal was 

heard the entire $35,522.94 in money sanctions was paid by 

the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, leaving McClellan owing nothing. She didn’t drop her appeal, however, 

doubtless because if Judge Grady’s sanctions order stands it 

will have a number of adverse consequences for her professionally, such as requiring her—should she ever move for

admission to the bar of another court—to acknowledge having been censured in a judicial order and ordered to contribute to the monetary sanctions that the judge imposed. See, 

e.g., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Petition for Admission to the General Bar (Jan. 2016). Or, should 

she be asked by judges, potential clients, or potential employers whether her professional conduct had ever been the 

subject of an investigation, she would have to answer (unless she lied, which could get her into worse trouble) that she 

had indeed been investigated for professional misconduct—

for Judge Grady’s order triggered an investigation of her by 

the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of 

the Illinois Supreme Court, though as far as we know no disciplinary action has been taken against her by the ARDC.

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
6 Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

In short, because a finding of attorney misconduct in a 

sanctions order can seriously impair an attorney’s professional standing, reputation, and earning possibilities, such 

an order can’t be brushed off as easily as a gnat. It is not just 

a slap on the wrist, or an angry remark by a judge in the 

course of a trial or other hearing. It is a judicial order, in this 

case issued by a respected and experienced federal judge

(really two respected and experienced federal judges, as the 

money sanction imposed by Judge Bucklo, together with her 

critical comments supportive of Judge Grady’s, amplified 

the gravity of Judge Grady’s order).

As a result of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office

having paid the entire sanctions judgment, McClellan has no 

standing to challenge the monetary sanction. But the sanctions order contains detailed findings of professional misconduct by her, findings likely to inflict a significant reputational injury having adverse financial consequences for her. 

Such an injury, inflicted in a formal judicial order, can be serious enough to make the order appealable. Were the order 

false, it would be akin to a defamatory accusation.

We are mindful of the holding in Bolte v. Home Ins. Co., 

744 F.2d 572, 573 (7th Cir. 1984), that “critical comments by a 

district judge” are not appealable orders. But the district

judge in that case had imposed no sanction. He had merely 

made a comment criticizing two lawyers en passant while 

ruling on another motion. The case settled before a hearing 

on sanctions was held, and no sanctions order was issued. 

That case is thus unlike this one, in which a sanctions order 

was issued that imposed not only a financial obligation on

McClellan, one of the targets of the order though spared by 

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410 7

pure luck from having to pay anything, but also what is likely to prove a serious blot on her professional escutcheon.

Subsequently, however, another panel of this court cited 

Bolte for the proposition that “an attorney may not appeal 

from an order that finds misconduct but does not result in 

monetary liability, despite the potential reputational effects.” 

Clark Equipment Co. v. Lift Parts Mfg. Co., 972 F.2d 817, 820 

(7th Cir. 1992). Bolte had not said that, however; and the 

court in Clark, qualifying the passage we just quoted, went 

on to say that “someday [the lawyer in question] may be 

able to show concrete harm to his reputation from the bare 

existence of [the district judge’s] unpublished opinions; 

should that contingency occur, mandamus might be an appropriate remedy.” Id. Again Bolte is cited, and indeed it had 

suggested that mandamus might be an appropriate remedy 

if a judge made harshly critical comments about a lawyer in 

a case that the judge was presiding over. 744 F.2d at 573. But 

there was no sanctions order in Bolte—and in Clark the panel 

vacated the sanctions order entered by the district judge as 

moot because the attorney’s client agreed to pay the sanctions as part of a settlement, though the panel did not vacate 

the written opinion reprimanding the attorney.

The opinion in Clark explains that

a court’s interest in having the rules of procedure obeyed 

never disappears. But that interest is not sufficient to keep 

a compensatory award alive for appeal after the parties 

have settled. A district court may sanction abusive behavior directly by imposing a punitive fine made payable to the 

court or by imposing non-monetary sanctions. These sanctions 

cannot be settled by the parties. Alternatively, however, the

court may sanction the offending party by forcing him to 

compensate his opponent for the trouble he has caused. 

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
8 Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

This second enforcement mechanism may be analogized to 

tort remedies, which also regulate behavior by compensating injured parties. Society at large has an interest in enforcing negligence rules, yet we allow tort plaintiffs to bargain away that interest by settling. So too the beneficiary of 

a compensatory sanction may bargain away the court's interest in seeing its rules enforced. Id. at 819 (emphases 

added, citation omitted).

Consistent with this passage, the orders entered by Judges Grady and Bucklo in the present case contain both monetary and nonmonetary sanctions, the latter consisting of the 

findings of misconduct in Judge Grady’s order, findings endorsed by Judge Bucklo. If we are right in analogizing such 

an order (if unjustified) to a defamatory accusation, there 

can be no basis for relegating the target of the order to his (in 

this case her) remedy of mandamus, which has a higher bar 

to success than an appeal. As pointed out in Keach v. County 

of Schenectady, 593 F.3d 218, 224–26 (2d Cir. 2010), eight federal courts of appeals have held that significant nonmonetary sanctions imposed by a federal judge on a lawyer appearing before him are appealable, at least if imposed by 

formal order as in the present case. The suggestion in Clark

that misconduct that doesn’t result in “monetary liability”

can’t support an appeal is contrary to the decisions of those 

courts unless we say that McClellan (like Voorman, the 

counterpart to McClellan in the Clark case) was subjected to 

“monetary liability” in being ordered to pay part of the fine 

levied by Judge Bucklo, though a miraculous intervention 

(the agreement of McClellan’s codefendant, the Cook County State’s Attorney, to pay the entire fine) cancelled the liability (Voorman too was saved financially by a settlement

that vacated the judgment against him). By virtue of that inCase: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410 9

tervention McClellan paid no financial sanction, and therefore under Clark would have been remitted to mandamus. 

But that places Clark in considerable tension not only with 

Bolte but also with Insurance Benefit Administrators, Inc. v. 

Martin, 871 F.2d 1354, 1359 (7th Cir. 1989), where we said 

that “a finding that a sanction is warranted does not necessarily require a monetary assessment,” meaning that monetary liability is not a sine qua non of a sanction order, and we 

have seen that such an order can impose injury even if it 

does not impose a financial cost on the person sanctioned.

This is a possibility to which the Clark decision does not 

avert.

It’s true that although Judge Grady expressed strong criticism of lawyer McClellan, the only sanctions order that he 

had decided to issue (though it was not quantified until the 

order issued by his successor, Judge Bucklo) was an order to 

pay, which when he issued it would have been expected to 

impose at least part of the expense on McClellan. We can 

imagine an argument that as in Bolte all we have here is a 

critical comment by the judge, and that a mere comment 

can’t be the subject of an appeal. It would indeed be odd to 

think that any time a judge criticized a lawyer, whether in 

open court or in a written order, the lawyer could treat the 

criticism as an appealable ruling. But there is a difference between a critical comment unjoined to a sanctions order and a 

critical comment that appears in and offers justification for a 

formal such order. The accusation of misconduct by McClellan is not an add-on to the order issued by Judge Grady but 

the justification for it. One of the sanctions that this court occasionally imposes, usually after a rule to show cause has 

been issued, is a formal censure or reprimand of a lawyer. 

Such a sanction, if imposed on an Illinois lawyer, must be 

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
10 Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

reported to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary 

Commission (or its equivalent in other states), and can result 

in the suspension of the lawyer’s law license, or worse.

The order in this case is best understood as a dual money-professional-ethics order, the two types of sanction being 

intertwined in it. Had it not been for McClellan’s professional misconduct, the monetary penalty imposed in the order

would have been smaller than it was. It was the absence of a 

sanctions order in Bolte that made the criticism of the lawyer 

a mere critical comment rather than a disciplinary ruling.

Only Clark seems to insist that without a monetary penalty a 

sanction order cannot be appealed no matter how heavy a 

weight it places on the sanctioned person, though the order

may be reviewable if mandamus is sought.

McClellan points out that a court may not impose sanctions based on conduct not specified in the parties’ motions 

unless it first “provides the attorney with notice regarding 

the sanctionable conduct and an opportunity to be heard.” 

The Jolly Group, Ltd. v. Medline Industries, Inc., 435 F.3d 717, 

720 (7th Cir. 2006). “A general notice that the court is contemplating sanctions is insufficient; rather, the offending 

party must be on notice of the specific conduct for which she 

is potentially subject to sanctions.” Johnson v. Cherry, 422 

F.3d 540, 551–52 (7th Cir. 2005). McClellan denies that the 

plaintiff’s motion provided her with sufficient notice. That is 

simply incorrect.

There is a further complication, however. In contesting 

Judge Grady’s accusation of professional misconduct, 

McClellan has no adversary. She’s not trying to take anything away from anyone; she just wants her name cleared.

It’s true that the plaintiffs have filed a brief opposing 

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410 11

McClellan and defending Judge Grady’s order (Judge Bucklo’s monetization of the order is not challenged). But what is 

the plaintiffs’ standing to participate in the appeal? They 

have nothing to gain from McClellan’s professional reputation taking a whack, nothing to lose should she be exonerated. Nor have they cross-appealed, seeking further sanctions 

against her. Maybe they have some ongoing or anticipated 

further struggles with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s 

Office, but they do not say so and anyway McClellan is no 

longer employed there.

The absence of an appellee with standing need not, however, and in this case does not, preclude an appeal. McClellan has suffered an injury that would be rectified were we to 

reverse. She therefore has standing to appeal. It might have 

been better had we, as in a case involving a contempt of the 

district court, designated the judge (Judge Bucklo now, because of Judge Grady’s retirement) as a respondent and 

therefore elicited a response to McClellan’s argument for reversal. But this omission was not fatal, or even consequential, given that Judge Grady had set forth the grounds of his 

harsh judgment of McClellan in lucid detail and that Judge 

Bucklo has signified her agreement with that judgment, thus 

leaving us well positioned to compare the reasons for the 

sanction with the arguments in McClellan’s briefs, and to

decide as in any appeal whether to affirm or reverse.

One possible final obstacle to the prompt resolution of 

this surprisingly complicated case remains to be considered. 

With Judge Grady out and Judge Bucklo in, one can imagine 

her deciding that her monetization of the sanctions order—

the $35,000 plus—was punishment enough and maybe she 

should lighten the verbal sanctions on McClellan. Indeed

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
12 Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410

McClellan urged her to alter Judge Grady’s ruling. Judge 

Bucklo refused, however, noting her agreement with Judge 

Grady’s order.

McClellan contends finally that Judge Grady lacked jurisdiction to impose any sanctions on her because the plaintiffs accepted the defendants’ offer of judgment after the filing of the motion for sanctions but before the judge ruled on 

it. Though a district court retains jurisdiction to impose sanctions after the proceeding in which the sanctionable conduct 

occurred has ended, Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 

384, 395–96 (1990), McClellan contends that the plaintiffs 

bargained away their right to the monetary sanction because 

the litigants agreed that the defendants would pay reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs. But that was separate from the 

sanctions motion filed against McClellan and her colleagues, 

who were not parties to the litigation. Moreover, the sanctions order serves not only as a means of collecting money 

from a malefactor to compensate the plaintiffs but also of 

punishing (and in turn deterring) wrongdoing by attaching a 

price tag to it.

The significance of the order, as far as McClellan is concerned, is not the price tag but the sharp criticisms of her in 

the order, and those criticisms were apt and accurate. The 

plaintiffs had been strung along by McClellan and others at 

the State’s Attorney’s Office for more than a year, having 

been incorrectly informed that the Office had not retained 

the plaintiffs’ criminal case files. McClellan had repeatedly 

denied that the files existed, without knowing whether they 

did or did not exist and without conducting a reasonable inquiry into the matter. She had even threatened the plaintiffs’

counsel that she would seek sanctions against him if he conCase: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13
Nos. 15-2752, 15-3410 13

tinued to request the documents in the face of her denial of 

their existence. She also tried to prevent him from searching 

for the files himself. And when the files were finally located 

she delayed turning them over by advancing a meritless 

claim of privilege. It took multiple court orders and more 

than a year of effort for the plaintiffs to obtain all the documents to which they were entitled. The district court did not 

abuse its discretion in sanctioning her.

In sum, we deny the plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss the 

appeal for lack of jurisdiction, and likewise McClellan’s petition for a writ of mandamus, which seeks the same relief as 

her appeal, just under a different rubric; and we affirm the 

orders issued by the two judges. But because of the tension 

between, on the one hand, our analysis and the decisions on 

which it rests (decisions from eight circuits, as noted in the 

Second Circuit’s decision in Keach, cited earlier), and on the 

other hand our decision in the Clark case—which we hereby

overrule to the extent that it deems a formal, but nonmonetary, sanction not appealable—we have circulated our

opinion in advance of publication to all the judges of the

court in regular active service, pursuant to Seventh Circuit 

Rule 40(e), for a determination of whether a majority of the 

judges want to rehear the case en banc. None of the judges

voted to hear it en banc. The judgment is

AFFIRMED.

Case: 15-2752 Document: 42 Filed: 05/23/2016 Pages: 13