Opinion ID: 596121
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Willfulness and Bad Faith

Text: 43 The district court believed that the defendants' conduct was intentional and not the result of excusable neglect. The court's finding on this point was particularly specific and detailed: 44 I harken back to the incident of the dismissal or the withdrawal of Mr. Crawford in particular where he was simply not paid and he had no choice but to ask to withdraw.... [This] was just a self-inflicted wound on the part of the client. They knew that that would be the result and never did I hear the client say that they couldn't afford to pay. I think ... that the client simply picked a fight with the lawyer in order to try to get new counsel into the case to necessitate a delay. App. at 557-58. 12 45 This is not a case in which defendants were unable to find counsel to represent them but one during which they manipulated the situation. The defendants' professed inability to find replacement counsel is belied by the fact that Meyer Blinder and IEI were represented by attorneys before the Colorado bankruptcy court. The district court even offered to have Kalmon Glovin, IEI's in-house counsel, admitted to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to replace Schnader, Harrison, but defendants refused to appoint Glovin as their trial counsel, using him instead tactically to file certain motions while Blinder acted pro se on other occasions. Moreover, defendants' present counsel, Stephen J. Mathes, had previously represented them before Mr. Crawford was retained. See note 12 supra. Inasmuch as the trial date had been set months earlier, the district court was entitled to view with some cynicism the coincidence of Mathes's reappearance for defendants on that date, and then only wrapped in conditions. 46 Further evidence of bad faith can be found in the defendants' total failure to respond to plaintiffs' requests for documents. Although IEI asserted in its opposition to the Rule 37 motion for sanctions that its compliance was precluded by conflicting obligations to the SIPC trustee, it could have easily directed its Colorado attorney, who was reviewing the same documents pursuant to an order of the bankruptcy court, to make copies for the Hoxworth class's attorneys. Based on this extensive evidence of willful conduct, we cannot say that the district court's finding that defendants acted in bad faith was clearly erroneous. Accord Bedwell, 843 F.2d at 695 (affirming district court's finding of bad faith where plaintiff knew that its counsel willfully failed to comply with three court orders, and ... outstanding discovery requests, and failed to advance plausible reasons for the failures).