Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02011/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02011-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Julia Egan

David Pineda
Appellee
Lewis G. Spicer
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

 For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 15-2011 

JULIA EGAN, 

Plaintiff, 

v.

DAVID PINEDA, 

Defendant-Appellee. 

APPEAL OF LEWIS G. SPICER, 

Attorney-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 12 C 9034 — Gary S. Feinerman, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED NOVEMBER 13, 2015 — DECIDED DECEMBER 23, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, RIPPLE, and SYKES, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The district judge imposed a $5,000 

sanction on lawyer Lewis Spicer for misconduct in representing plaintiff Egan in this case, which alleged sex discrimCase: 15-2011 Document: 31 Filed: 12/23/2015 Pages: 4
2 No. 15-2011 

ination and the creation of a hostile work environment. The 

judge imposed the sanction pursuant to the inherent authority of federal judges to sanction attorneys for actions taken 

“in bad faith.” Chambers v. NASCO Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45–46 

(1991); Johnson v. Cherry, 422 F.3d 540, 548–49 (7th Cir. 2005). 

Bad faith can be “recklessly making a frivolous claim,” Mach 

v. Will County Sheriff, 580 F.3d 495, 501 (7th Cir. 2009), which 

is an accurate description of the conduct for which Spicer 

was sanctioned. And the claim he advanced on behalf of his 

client, the plaintiff, was not only frivolous but also damaging to the defendant. 

The 75th paragraph of a complaint of more than 100 paragraphs, drafted by Spicer, alleges that Egan “was repeatedly caused to be subjected to unwelcome verbal and physical 

actions of a sexual nature and was further victimized by acts 

of sexual assault by the defendants’ male employees in her 

work environment throughout her employment tenure with 

defendants.” The defendants included her employer, Huntington Copper, LLC, and one of its former owners, David 

Pineda. The paragraph we quoted could thus be understood 

to be accusing Pineda of having subjected the plaintiff to 

unwelcome “physical actions of a sexual nature” and of having been responsible for sexual assaults on her by male employees of Huntington. Yet at her deposition Egan emphatically denied having been sexually assaulted (or otherwise 

subjected to unwanted physical contact) by Huntington personnel during her employment by the firm. When asked 

why she had alleged such conduct in her complaint she said 

she hadn’t written or even seen the quoted passage or signed 

the complaint. Spicer concedes that the allegations in the 

paragraph were false. Pineda filed a motion for sanctions 

Case: 15-2011 Document: 31 Filed: 12/23/2015 Pages: 4
No. 15-2011 3 

against Spicer for filing a false, and very damaging, complaint against him. 

After dismissing the complaint against Pineda for lack of 

personal jurisdiction (a dismissal not contested by either 

Egan or Spicer on appeal), the judge held a hearing at which 

he asked Spicer to explain how the phony allegation of sexual assault had gotten into the complaint. Spicer said “it was 

an error,” but when asked by the judge “how did that error 

occur?” he answered only that “it was not supposed to be in 

there ... . It was an oversight on our part ... .” The judge was 

not satisfied. At the next status hearing he asked Spicer 

“What happened that allowed that allegation, which everybody now agrees was false, how did that allegation make its 

way into a complaint that you signed and filed?” Again 

Spicer was unresponsive—and worse. He said “I don’t know 

what to tell you, other than it was an error and an oversight 

on my part. ... [I]t was a simple error in proofreading on my 

part.” How could it have been a “simple” error, let alone a 

proofreading error? Proofreading means carefully reading a 

text to find and correct typographical, grammatical, stylistic, 

and spelling errors. Maybe Spicer meant that someone else 

had written paragraph 75 and that he (Spicer) in proofreading it had failed to catch the errors. But the errors were not 

typographical, grammatical, etc.; the paragraph was clearly 

written; a perfect proofread would not have discovered that 

the paragraph was asserting a falsehood. Spicer’s brief in 

this court offers no alternative to “oversight” and “proofreading error” as excuses for paragraph 75. Those excuses 

are pathetic and leave us in the dark about how or why he 

falsified the complaint. 

Case: 15-2011 Document: 31 Filed: 12/23/2015 Pages: 4
4 No. 15-2011 

Moreover, the record contradicts his claim that “when 

the errant allegation was brought to the attention of Mr. 

Spicer, he promptly sought to have it withdrawn and stipulated that Paragraph 75 contained incorrect and untrue allegations.” The error was discovered during Egan’s deposition. That took place in January 2014. Not until July 2014, six 

months later, did Spicer file a stipulation stating that “Paragraph 75 of the Complaint contains an incorrect and untrue 

allegation regarding sexual assault.” 

The district judge’s imposition of the $5,000 sanction on 

attorney Spicer was amply justified. 

AFFIRMED

Case: 15-2011 Document: 31 Filed: 12/23/2015 Pages: 4