Opinion ID: 783938
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Contentions concerning the dismissal order

Text: 83 The district court doubly sanctioned Cello for the following contention in its answer concerning the August 15, 2000 order dismissing the First Action: The Order entered by the Court is a matter of public record. The Order was entered pursuant to a settlement agreement, not as a determination on the merits and was without prejudice to the rights of the Defendants herein to assert ownership of the disputed domain name. Storey, 182 F.Supp.2d at 366-67. 84 First, the district court noted that Cello itself argued the opposite when, in its motion for summary judgment, it stated that the parties never agreed upon the terms of a settlement. Id. at 366. On the same page of the summary judgment motion, however, Cello qualified this statement with the following: The only agreement, therefore, was to dismiss the First Action which addressed only the prior use of the name. (Def. Mem. Supp. Summ. J. at 3). Furthermore, in the Virginia court proceedings, the parties concurred that at the end of the First Action they had reached an agreement that [the action] was not going to be pursued any further at that point. Although Cello had sufficient notice to be sanctioned for this statement, its contention that the First Action was dismissed pursuant to an agreement, as tenuous as it is, is not utterly lacking in support. O'Brien, 101 F.3d at 1489. 85 Second, the district court considered that the contention was factually false because the text of the August 15 order contains the words with prejudice and the answer states that the same order was without prejudice. Here, the district court confused a factual argument with a legal argument. Cello admitted the textual contents of the order as a matter of public record. As the discussion of the merits above demonstrates, Cello's argument that the judgment in the First Action was without prejudice to the rights of the Defendants herein to assert ownership of the disputed domain name is, in a limited fashion, legally accurate. Cello's statement is nothing more than a reformulation of the principle that res judicata does not apply to bar the entirety of the current action. Accordingly, this statement is not sanctionable. 86