Opinion ID: 170441
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Standard for Determining Fee Amount

Text: Appellant attempts, without explicitly so indicating, to import several precedents concerning Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure into the context of 28 U.S.C. § 1927. We reject the endeavor. Principally, he relies on White v. General Motors Corp., 908 F.2d 675 (10th Cir.1990), as establishing a sort of parsimony principle for sanctions: that [t]he appropriate sanction should be the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish the offender. Id. at 684; accord, e.g., Barrett v. Tallon, 30 F.3d 1296, 1302-03 (10th Cir.1994). Yet the text of § 1927, unlike that of Rule 11, indicates a purpose to compensate victims of abusive litigation practices, not to deter and punish offenders. Rule 11 expressly provides that [a] sanction imposed under this rule must be limited to what suffices to deter repetition of the conduct or comparable conduct by others similarly situated. Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(c)(4); see also Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 393, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990). Section 1927, on the other hand, allows a court to require an attorney to satisfy personally the excess costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees reasonably incurred because of [vexatiously multiplicative] conduct. The statute fits much more comfortably with a victim-centered approach, and we would be reluctant to supply a parsimony provision where Congress has not done so. Compare Fox Valley Constr. Workers Fringe Benefit Funds v. Pride of Fox Masonry & Expert Restorations, 140 F.3d 661, 667 (7th Cir.1998) ([W]here the [§ 1927] sanctions were tailored as well as possible to compensate the other party for time lost to [attorney's] antics, we will not require the court to consider [his] ability to pay.) with Samuels v. Wilder, 906 F.2d 272, 276 (7th Cir.1990) (Easterbrook, J.) (Rule 11 and § 1927 are sanctions rules, not compensation devices.). We recognize that the Conference Committee's report on the 1980 amendment to § 1927 indicated that that amendment was made, in part at least, to deter unnecessary delays in litigation. H.R.Rep. No. 96-1234, at 8 (1980) (Conf. Rep.), reprinted in 1980 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2781, 2782. The report, however, concerns an amendment which broadened the previously awardable excess costs to include excess costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees. Antitrust Procedural Improvements Act of 1980, Pub.L. No. 96-349, § 3, 94 Stat. 1154, 1156. The original law dates to 1813, and we know of nothing that would illumine whether the Thirteenth Congress intended it as a compensatory or a deterrent mechanism. See Act of July 22, 1813, ch. 14, § 3, 3 Stat. 19, 21 (allowing court to consolidate related cases and to require attorney who shall appear to have multiplied the proceedings in any cause before the court so as to increase costs unreasonably and vexatiously . . . to satisfy any excess of costs so incurred). Moreover, it would make no difference to our holding if Congress' purpose was indeed a deterrent one. A purpose of deterrence is as easily satisfied, if not more easily, by an interpretation in accord with the text of the statuteallowing recovery of all excess costs, expenses, and feesas by the interpretation urged now, which would needlessly impute to the statute a limitation on the amount recoverable. And even deterrence, unlike punishment, does not ordinarily call for a parsimony principle. On this basis, we also reject Appellant's contention that the court's sanction award improperly failed to comply with our directive in White that a district court consider such factors as the minimum amount that will serve as a deterrent and the attorney's ability to pay. See White, 908 F.2d at 684-85. White dealt with sanctions under Rule 11, which is not a compensatory mechanism.