UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

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BRAVE LAW FIRM, LLC, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant, 

v.

TRUCK ACCIDENT LAWYERS 

GROUP, INC.; BRAD PISTOTNIK LAW, 

P. A.; BRADLEY A. PISTOTNIK, 

 Defendants - Appellees.

No. 20-3049

(D.C. No. 6:17-CV-01156-EFM-JPO)

(D. Kan.)

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ORDER AND JUDGMENT*

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Before HARTZ, KELLY, and EID, Circuit Judges.

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Brave Law Firm, LLC (“Brave”), appeals from the district court’s judgment 

enforcing a settlement agreement in Brave’s suit against Truck Accident Lawyers 

Group, Inc., Brad Pistotnik Law, and Bradley A. Pistotnik (collectively, “Pistotnik”). 

Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

* After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined 

unanimously to honor the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral 

argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore 

submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, 

except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It 

may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.

FILED

United States Court of Appeals

Tenth Circuit

February 8, 2021

Christopher M. Wolpert

Clerk of Court
2

BACKGROUND

Brave and Pistotnik are competing personal-injury law firms in Kansas. Brave 

sued Pistotnik for false advertising and unfair competition under the Lanham Act, as 

well as for violations of Kansas law. It alleged that certain print, video, and Internet 

advertisements stating that Pistotnik had obtained large verdicts or settlements were 

false or misleading for various reasons. 

As relevant to this appeal, Brave challenged Pistotnik’s advertisements 

regarding a certain $9 million settlement (the Settlement). During the litigation, 

Brave “agreed to dismiss this lawsuit upon receipt of authenticated, admissible proof 

that the $9,000,000 . . . settlement advertised by all of the Defendants occurred as 

advertised.” Id. Vol. 5 at 991. Pistotnik produced documentation showing that 

Bradley Pistotnik was counsel in a suit that resulted in a $9.5 million settlement for 

an injured man, his wife, and their two minor children. But Brave declined to 

dismiss the case, stating that the production did not satisfy its offer because the

settlement involved four clients, rather than one.

1

 

Pistotnik moved to enforce the settlement agreement, and Brave argued in 

response that Pistotnik’s pleadings admitted that he had advertised the Settlement as 

belonging to one client. After holding an evidentiary hearing, the district court ruled 

in favor of Pistotnik. Rejecting Brave’s position, it held that “[t]he settlement offer 

requires [Pistotnik] to submit proof of a settlement that is consistent with its

1 The discrepancy between the $9 million advertised amount and the $9.5 million 

settlement amount is not at issue.
3

advertisements. The Court can make its own conclusions regarding what the 

advertisements say, and it finds that they do not advertise obtaining a settlement for a 

single client.” Aplt. App., Vol. 10 at 1754 n.11. The court therefore granted 

Pistotnik’s motion to enforce the settlement agreement and dismissed the case. 

Also relevant to this appeal, the magistrate judge entered a protective order 

preventing the parties from disclosing documents designated as confidential. Upon 

Brave’s motion to compel, the magistrate judge required Pistotnik to produce 

documents concerning the Settlement, subject to the protective order. The documents 

showed the caption of the case underlying the Settlement, and with that information, 

Brave procured copies of the filings directly from that court. Pistotnik moved for a 

protective order requiring Brave to maintain the confidentiality of the former clients’ 

identities and precluding it from publicly connecting the court records it obtained to 

the Settlement. Brave objected, asserting that the information it obtained from the 

originating court was public information. 

The magistrate judge granted Pistotnik’s motion, holding:

In the abstract, plaintiff is correct that the policy in this district is not to 

protect from disclosure documents that are available to the public. But the 

issue here is more complex. As a matter of basic fairness, practicality, and 

respect for court orders, the court holds a litigant may not use confidential 

information that the court has specifically ruled subject to the court’s 

protective order to obtain documents and then use those documents to 

publicize the very confidential information that the court protected. 

Aplt. App. Vol. 7 at 1231 (footnote omitted). Noting that “the court . . . 

contemplated the identity of the parties to the underlying settlement would be 

protected,” the magistrate judge stated, “[t]he court will not permit the plaintiff to 
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make an end-run around its orders.” Id. at 1232. Brave filed Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(a)

objections with the district court, which affirmed the magistrate judge’s order. 

Brave now appeals from the decisions enforcing the settlement agreement and 

upholding the confidentiality order.

DISCUSSION

I. Enforcement of Settlement Agreement

“A trial court has the power to summarily enforce a settlement agreement 

entered into by the litigants while the litigation is pending before it.” United States v. 

Hardage, 982 F.2d 1491, 1496 (10th Cir. 1993). “We review a district court's 

decision to enforce a settlement agreement for abuse of discretion.” Walters v. 

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 703 F.3d 1167, 1172 (10th Cir. 2013). “An abuse of 

discretion occurs when the district court based its decision on an erroneous 

conclusion of law or where there is no rational basis in the evidence for the ruling.” 

Shoels v. Klebold, 375 F.3d 1054, 1060 (10th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). Under the abuse-of-discretion standard, “[w]e will leave the district court’s 

decision undisturbed unless we have a definite and firm conviction that the court 

made a clear error of judgment.” Walters, 703 F.3d at 1172.

Brave first argues that the district court erred in declining to consider 

Pistotnik’s alleged admissions, in several pleadings and filings in the litigation, that 

the Settlement involved one client. It asserts that judicial admissions are binding at 

later stages in the litigation and that the court erred in “substitut[ing] its own opinion 

in lieu of admitted facts,” Opening Br. at 28. We disagree. The terms of the 
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settlement offer are unambiguous, based on the Settlement “as advertised.” Aplt. 

App. Vol. 5 at 991. The district court did not err in evaluating the advertisements 

without regard to the parties’ characterizations thereof. And it did not err in 

declining to rewrite the terms of the settlement offer to include terms (including 

proof of a single client) that were not set forth therein. 

Brave next challenges the district court’s conclusion that the advertisements 

did not communicate that the Settlement was for one client. Pointing to a television 

ad’s disclaimer that “[t]he client results from stated verdicts or settlements are real 

amounts,” Aplt. App. Vol. 1 at 47; id. Vol. 7 at 1189, 1190, Brave argues that the 

term “client results” indicates that Pistotnik obtained the $9 million result for one

client, not multiple clients. It disagrees with the court’s determination that the 

disclaimer used “client” as an adjective rather than a noun, asserting, “[i]n the phrase 

‘client results,’ the word ‘client’ acts as a possessive, singular noun denoting that the 

results advertised belonged to a client,” Opening Br. at 34. Again, we disagree. The 

district court did not err in concluding that the disclaimer did not necessarily 

communicate that the Settlement was for a single client, rather than multiple clients. 

To the contrary, reading “client results” in the way Brave urges would imply that all 

of the settlements listed in the advertisement were for one client, which would be

contrary to common sense.

Finally, Brave asserts that the settlement agreement did not constitute a 

contract under Kansas law because there was no meeting of the minds between the 

parties. It does not show where it made this argument in the district court, however, 
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nor does it reply to Pistotnik’s assertion that the argument is new on appeal. And it 

does not argue for plain error before this court. “[T]he failure to do so—the failure 

to argue for plain error and its application on appeal—surely marks the end of the 

road for an argument for reversal not first presented to the district court.” Richison v. 

Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123, 1131 (10th Cir. 2011). 

For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s decision to enforce the 

settlement agreement.

II. Protective Order

The district court has the power to enter and to modify protective orders. 

See S.E.C. v. Merrill Scott & Assocs., Ltd., 600 F.3d 1262, 1271 (10th Cir. 2010). 

Like the decision to enforce a settlement agreement, we review decisions regarding

protective orders for abuse of discretion. See id. “[W]e will not disturb a trial 

court’s decision absent a definite and firm conviction that the lower court made a 

clear error of judgment or exceeded the bounds of permissible choice in the 

circumstances.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Brave argues that publicly available information cannot be considered 

confidential. But although this argument may have some facial appeal, it ignores the 

peculiar circumstances of this case. Before this litigation, Brave spent years trying to 

learn the identities of the parties to the Settlement. It finally was able to identify 

those persons—who are not parties to this litigation—and pinpoint the underlying 

lawsuit only because the magistrate judge ordered Pistotnik to produce documents, 

pursuant to a protective order. Moreover, the parties have a long and contentious
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history, and apparently Brave intended to publicly release the information it obtained 

from the originating court. Any such release likely would work to the detriment to 

the parties to the Settlement, who (again) are not parties to this lawsuit. In this 

situation, in which Brave obtained possession of otherwise public information only 

through leveraging its access to materials the magistrate judge declared protected, we 

cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in upholding the 

magistrate judge’s orders.

For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s decision rejecting Brave’s 

Rule 72(a) objections and affirming the protective order. 

CONCLUSION

Brave’s unopposed motion to seal Volume 6 of the Appellant’s Appendix is 

granted. The district court’s judgment is affirmed. 

Entered for the Court

Allison H. Eid

Circuit Judge