Opinion ID: 75882
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Sanctions Issue

Text: 44 As we have noted, the district court relied on its inherent powers to levy sanctions against Munson. It has long been understood that certain implied powers must necessarily result to our Courts of justice from the nature of their institution, powers which cannot be dispensed with in a Court, because they are necessary to the exercise of all others. Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 43, 111 S.Ct. 2123, 2132, 115 L.Ed.2d 27 (1991) (internal quotations and brackets omitted). Accordingly, [c]ourts of justice are universally acknowledged to be vested, by their very creation, with power to impose silence, respect, and decorum, in their presence, and submission to their lawful mandates. Id. (internal quotations omitted); see also Byrne v. Nezhat, 261 F.3d 1075, 1131-32 n. 110 (11th Cir.2001) (providing overview of the inherent powers lodged in Article III courts). This means, among other things, that a federal court has the power to control admission to its bar and to discipline attorneys. Chambers, 501 U.S. at 43, 111 S.Ct. at 2132; see also Roadway Express, Inc. v. Piper, 447 U.S. 752, 766, 100 S.Ct. 2455, 2464, 65 L.Ed.2d 488 (1980) (noting that [t]he power of a court over members of its bar is at least as great as its authority over litigants). That is, [e]ven absent explicit legislative enactment, deeply rooted in the common law tradition is the power of any court ... to impose reasonable and appropriate sanctions upon errant lawyers practicing before it. Carlucci v. Piper Aircraft Corp., 775 F.2d 1440, 1447 (11th Cir.1985) (internal quotations omitted). This inherent power to sanction errant lawyers, in fact, can be invoked even if procedural rules exist which sanction the same conduct. Chambers, 501 U.S. at 49, 111 S.Ct. at 2135; see also In re Mroz, 65 F.3d at 1575 (pointing out that although certain conduct may or may not be violative of Rule 11 or Bankruptcy Rule 9011, it does not necessarily mean that a party will escape sanctions under the court's inherent power). 45 Due to the scope of the inherent powers vested in federal courts, however, it is necessary that such courts exercise caution in invoking [their] inherent power. Chambers, 501 U.S. at 50, 111 S.Ct. at 2136. Hence, before a court can impose sanctions against a lawyer under its inherent power, it must find that the lawyer's conduct constituted or was tantamount to bad faith. Durrett v. Jenkins Brickyard, Inc., 678 F.2d 911, 918 (11th Cir.1982); see also Barnes v. Dalton, 158 F.3d 1212, 1214 (11th Cir.1998) (The key to unlocking a court's inherent power is a finding of bad faith.). A finding of bad faith is warranted where an attorney knowingly or recklessly raises a frivolous argument, or argues a meritorious claim for the purpose of harassing an opponent. A party also demonstrates bad faith by delaying or disrupting the litigation or hampering enforcement of a court order. Barnes, 158 F.3d at 1214 (internal quotations omitted). Additionally, for the imposition of sanctions to be proper, a court must comply with the mandates of due process, Chambers, 501 U.S. at 50, 111 S.Ct. at 2136, meaning that the lawyer facing sanctions must be provided with notice and an opportunity to respond, orally or in writing, to the invocation of such sanctions and to justify his actions. In re Mroz, 65 F.3d at 1575-76. 46 Based on these principles and on our review of the record, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in sanctioning Munson pursuant to the court's inherent power. The five documents filed by Munson that the district court referenced — paragraph 12 of the Thomas affidavit, paragraph 5 of the Blair affidavit, the Plaintiff's Amended Supplement, the Mercer declaration, and footnote 2 of the Plaintiff's Response to Defendant's Motion to Exclude — evince bad faith on the part of Munson in her conduct towards opposing counsel. As our extensive citation to the five documents in Part 1 shows, the documents are saturated with invective directed at opposing counsel. For instance, the five documents filed by Munson are pervaded with rude, demeaning remarks about opposing counsel's physical traits and demeanor. 20 Additionally, the documents filed by Munson contain attacks upon the fitness of opposing counsel as a member of the bar, 21 and they contain statements that can only be construed as thinly veiled physical threats. 22 Munson, in fact, even went so far as to file a document containing an overt racial slur made by her. See Mercer Decl. at 3 (stating that Munson had remarked that she was unimpressed with [opposing counsel] or his race). Finally, the five documents are strewn with generalizations and conclusory comments that paint opposing counsel as a racist bigot and thus impugn his character. 23 47 Due to the insertion of all these patently offensive remarks in the five documents, the district court did not err in finding that Munson filed the documents in bad faith, namely, for the purpose of deliberately provoking unnecessary personal animosity and conflict between opposing counsel and for the purpose of creating an unjustified and false impression that the opposing legal positions of the parties were the result of racism on the part of [opposing] counsel. R4-119-2. The district court's finding was correct because the remarks serve no purpose other than to harass and intimidate opposing counsel, and thus are inconsistent with basic rules of professional conduct that apply to Munson. 24 The Standards of Conduct found in the Local Court Rules of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia provide that an attorney must communicate respectfully with other lawyers. Middle Dist. Rules, Standard of Conduct A(2). A lawyer also must avoid creating unnecessary animosity or contentiousness. Standard A(7). With respect to Written Submissions to a Court, Including Briefs, Memoranda, Affidavits and Declarations, Standard B(3)(b) specifically states that [n]either written submissions nor oral presentations should disparage the intelligence, ethics, morals, integrity or personal behavior of another lawyer or his/her client, unless such matters are directly and necessarily in issue. Standard B(3)(b). 48 Similarly, Munson's filing of documents that contained harassing and intimidating remarks directed at opposing counsel violates several ethics provisions adopted by the Supreme Court of Georgia. 25 The Georgia Code of Professional Responsibility (the Georgia Code), in effect at the time that Munson filed the offensive documents, 26 provides: 49 In adversary proceedings, clients are litigants and though ill feeling may exist between clients, such ill feeling should not influence a lawyer in his conduct, attitude, and demeanor towards opposing lawyers. A lawyer should not make unfair or derogatory personal reference to opposing counsel. Haranguing and offensive tactics by lawyers interfere with the orderly administration of justice and have no proper place in our legal system. 50 Georgia Code, EC 7-37 (1999); see also EC 7-38 (stating that [a] lawyer should be courteous to opposing counsel); cf. Georgia Rules, pmbl. ¶ 4 (2002) (A lawyer should use the law's procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others. A lawyer should demonstrate respect for ... other lawyers.). Similarly, the Georgia Code states that an attorney should not assert a position ... or take other action on behalf of the client when he knows or when it is obvious that such action would serve merely to harass or maliciously injure another. Georgia Code, DR 7-102(A)(1); cf. Georgia Rule 3.1(a) (substantively identical to DR-7-102(A)(1) but made gender neutral); R. 4.4 (stating that a lawyer shall not use means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person). 51 The Middle District Standards of Conduct and the Georgia Code provisions that we have discussed were violated by Munson when she filed the five documents that contained (1) insulting remarks about opposing counsel's physical traits and demeanor, (2) comments that called into question opposing counsel's fitness as a member of the bar, (3) thinly veiled threats aimed at opposing counsel, (4) a racial slur, and (5) unsubstantiated claims that opposing counsel was a racist. 27 The fact that Munson violated the applicable ethics rules not once, but on repeated occasions, further buttresses our conclusion that the district court acted appropriately in invoking its inherent power to sanction Munson. 52 Furthermore, in reaching our conclusion that sanctions were appropriate, we note that Munson cannot justify her offensive conduct, as she has tried to do, by making bareboned assertions that opposing counsel had unclean hands because he acted with racial animus towards Thomas and the plaintiff witnesses. Even if we were to assume that opposing counsel's conduct towards Thomas and the other witnesses was racist, 28 Munson still would not be justified in filing documents that do not simply relate facts, but instead overflow with personal insults that obviously are calculated to harass and intimidate opposing counsel. If opposing counsel was conducting himself in an inappropriate manner during discovery, the proper course was for Munson to seek a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c), which she manifestly failed to do in this case, not to resort to the slinging of insults ex post in documents submitted for summary judgment purposes. Affidavits, declarations, and other submissions to the court serve as a vehicle for the articulation of specific facts that support a particular position relevant to a case. Such submissions, however, are not meant to be an avenue through which attorneys, clients, and witnesses can simply emote, let off steam, or otherwise sling mud at an adversary. 53 Yet Munson's position is that, even if offensive remarks were contained in her submissions to the district court, the remarks were those of her client and of other plaintiff witnesses, not her own. Specifically, she contends that the remarks contained in the Thomas and Blair affidavits and the Mercer declaration are attributable solely to those individuals. Her argument is that the remarks cannot be imputed to her based on the mere act of her filing such documents with the court. Thus, Munson concludes, the district court erred by holding her responsible for the remarks contained in the affidavits and the declaration, given the fact that the court did not first hold an evidentiary hearing, and given the fact that the court did not make a specific factual finding that she drafted the documents or that she counseled the affiants and the declarant to insert the offensive remarks. 54 Munson suggests that a contrary result would place on attorneys a duty to inspect affidavits and declarations, which she asserts is contrary to the ethics rules: Counsel are not afforded the luxury of `policing witnesses' perceptions' or disregarding valid evidence helpful to their client's case even if that evidence contains the affiants' perceptions and/or opinions that the district court or the opposing counsel may have found offensive. Munson Appellant Br. at 8. Otherwise, she maintains, an attorney would be placed in an adversarial position vis a vis his or her client because the attorney would be forced to disregard entire affidavits or declarations that may contain facts central to his or her client's case. This, in turn, would interfere with the attorney's duty of loyalty to his or her client, in Munson's view. 55 We reject Munson's argument. As an initial matter, we point out that in her appellant brief, Munson directs her attention to the remarks aimed at opposing counsel that were contained in the Thomas and Blair affidavits and in the Mercer declaration. She ignores the fact that the district court also sanctioned her for comments she herself made in the Plaintiff's Amended Supplement and in footnote 2 of the Plaintiff's Response to Defendant's Motion to Exclude. Case law is replete with instances where an attorney has been sanctioned for his or her own unsubstantiated accusations and demeaning, condescending, and harassing comments directed at opposing counsel, 29 and such accusations and comments are present in these two documents written and filed by Munson. Thus, irrespective of whether Munson can be held responsible for the offensive remarks contained in the affidavits and declaration, the sanctions imposed still were appropriate based on her own written remarks contained in the Plaintiff's Amended Supplement and in footnote 2 of the Plaintiff's Response to Defendant's Motion to Exclude. 56 In addition, we reject Munson's assertion that, because she only filed the documents with the district court, she cannot be held responsible for the offensive remarks contained in the Thomas and Blair affidavits and the Mercer declaration. Accordingly, we also reject her assertion that the district court, before holding her responsible for the affidavits and the declaration, had to hold an evidentiary hearing and had to make a specific factual finding either that she drafted the offensive remarks, or that she counseled the affiants and the declarant to insert the remarks into the submitted documents. DR 7-102(A)(1) of the Georgia Code makes clear that an attorney cannot assert a position... or take other action on behalf of his client when he knows or when it is obvious that such action would serve merely to harass or maliciously injure another. Georgia Code DR 7-102(A)(1) (emphasis added); cf. Georgia Rule 3.1(a) (substantively identical to DR 7-102(A)(1) but made gender neutral). Other action on behalf of his client is a broad, catch-all phrase, and it surely includes within its ambit the filing of affidavits or declarations. It follows, then, that DR 7-102(A)(1) prohibits an attorney from submitting to the court affidavits or declarations when it is obvious that the documents contain remarks that serve merely to harass another, as was the case with the Thomas and Blair affidavits and the Mercer declaration. Munson's position, therefore, is contradicted by DR 7-102(A)(1) of the Georgia Code. 30 57 Moreover, we reject Munson's position because, if we were to accept her reasoning, we would be endorsing a passive role for attorneys with respect to filings made with a court. An attorney should not be an unreflecting conduit through which the opinions or desires of a client or witness are permitted to flow unchecked. As the Georgia ethics rules indicate, an attorney has a duty to exercise independent professional judgment. Georgia Code Canon 5 (capitalization and italics omitted); cf. Georgia Rule 2.1 (same). Independent judgment is an essential ingredient of good lawyering, since attorneys have duties not only to their clients, but also, as officers of the court, to the system of justice as a whole. Malautea v. Suzuki Motor Co., 987 F.2d 1536, 1546 (11th Cir.1993) (All attorneys, as `officers of the court,' owe duties of complete candor and primary loyalty to the court before which they practice. An attorney's duty to a client can never outweigh his or her responsibility to see that our system of justice functions smoothly.). Given this duty, it follows that an attorney cannot file first and think later, In re TCI Ltd., 769 F.2d 441, 442 (7th Cir.1985), thereby neglecting to employ his or her independent professional judgment to consider the plausibility and the appropriateness of what is asserted in the filed document. 58 Furthermore, with respect to an attorney's relationship with his or her client, [i]t has been noted that an attorney is not merely the client's alter ego functioning only as the client's mouthpiece. Morrison v. State, 258 Ga. 683, 373 S.E.2d 506, 509 (Ga.1988) (internal quotations omitted). Even though the client has decision making authority regarding the objectives of the representation, the client's attorney can pursue those objectives only through lawful and ethical means. See Georgia Code DR 7-101(A)(1) (stating that an attorney can pursue the lawful objectives of his client through reasonably available means permitted by law and the [ethics] [r]ules); cf. Georgia Rule 1.3 cmt. 1 (providing that [a] lawyer ... may take whatever lawful and ethical measures are required to vindicate a client's cause or endeavor). Consequently, an attorney cannot silently acquiesce to a client who demands that the attorney pursue measures in the litigation that conflict with applicable ethics provisions. 31 Rather, the attorney must stand his or her ground and refuse to act in a manner that flies in the face of the relevant ethics rules. And, if the foregoing is true with respect to a client, it is even more true with respect to a witness, to whom the attorney does not owe a duty of loyalty. Thus, in the present case, Munson cannot shield herself from sanctions by asserting that her role was merely the passive one of filing the affidavits and the declaration with the district court. By filing the documents containing remarks that served no purpose other than to harass and intimidate opposing counsel, Munson at best silently acquiesced to litigation tactics that flew in the face of baseline professional norms. 59 Based on these considerations, we decide that Munson could be sanctioned under the district court's inherent power 32 not only for the Plaintiff's Amended Supplement and footnote 2 of the Plaintiff's Response to Defendant's Motion to Exclude, but also for paragraph 12 of the Thomas affidavit, paragraph 5 of the Blair affidavit, and the Mercer declaration. Under the circumstances here, Munson's conduct cross[ed] the line from passionate advocacy ... into sanctionable conduct evincing bad faith. In re 60 E. 80th St. Equities, Inc., 218 F.3d 109, 117 (2d Cir.2000). The district court acted well within its discretion in formally censuring and reprimanding Munson. The court also acted properly in stating that any future documents filed by Munson that were found, after notice and an opportunity to be heard, to contain such remarks would be stricken without an opportunity to amend or withdraw. 33