Opinion ID: 867870
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Attorney Leichty

Text: It is well settled that an attorney’s conduct on appeal as well as the arguments he makes may expose him to sanctions both under our inherent power and under the proscriptions of 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38. See Gallop I, 642 F.3d at 370. We therefore begin with Attorney Leichty, who has represented Mariani during the entire course of this appeal and has put his name on each of the filings that has caused serious concern. As to frivolousness, Attorney Leichty asserts that he reasonably believed that his client’s second appeal had merit. At the very least, he says, he should not be faulted for misapprehending the preclusive effect of N.S. Windows under the law-of-the-case doctrine. See Leichty Resp. to Order to Show Cause at 9 (“[T]here was no indisputable ‘law of the case’ preventing Ellen Mariani from bringing a second intervention motion . . . on what she believed 6 were different and compelling facts.”). For present purposes, we will accept that argument. Although a competent attorney should have realized that N.S. Windows necessarily foreclosed the motion to intervene, the appeal, while not meritorious in and of itself, is not so frivolous as to warrant sanctions. But of course, sanctions are not limited only to frivolous appeals. Frivolous arguments with regard to a motion – particularly where that frivolousness is coupled with inappropriate conduct that suggests the attorney was motivated by bad faith – may also merit the imposition of sanctions by this Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 1927; Chambers, 501 U.S. at 45-46; Gallop III, 660 F.3d at 584. We conclude that Mariani’s related Motion to Supplement the Record, filed by Leichty in connection with the second appeal, is such a motion. In this litigation, Leichty has engaged in a pattern of vexatious and duplicative filings, targeting opponents and judges with rude language, and asserting spurious legal positions.2 He has nonetheless managed to avoid sanctions up to this point. On April 19, 2012, however, he crossed the line by filing the wholly inappropriate Motion. We conclude that the Motion was 2 For example, during the pendency of the N.S. Windows appeal, Leichty requested, by letter dated September 9, 2009, that the caption be changed to “Mariani v. Ransmeier.” This request was devoid of legal merit. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 12(a) required the Clerk to docket the appeal under the caption used by the district court, dispelling Leichty’s baseless suggestion that the clerk had chosen the caption with the design of debasing his client. But it was not so much its patent disregard of Rule 12, as the tone of the letter that was especially disdainful. Instead of sticking to legal argument, Leichty’s letter devolved into personal attacks, accusing the Clerk of Court of intentionally making Mariani “look foolish,” of “‘thumbing its nose’ at the appellant,” and of “sending a message about the arbitrary and capricious intent of the Court.” Letter from Attorney Leichty to Clerk’s Office, N.S. Windows, LLC v. Minoru Yamasaki Assocs., No. 07-5442-cv (2d Cir. Sept. 10, 2009). We note, further, that in Leichty’s appellate briefing, he permitted himself to indulge in similarly unprofessional language regarding opposing counsel. For example, in one brief he ridicules Ransmeier’s counsel for a minor misspelling and suggests to us that the error is a reason to ignore Ransmeier’s arguments. This is not good lawyering. It is just a cheap shot. 7 frivolous, and even more significantly, that it was filed to air false and egregiously insulting views about the district court without any good-faith belief that the Motion would be successful. Leichty asserts in the Motion that he has obtained “newly-discovered evidence” demonstrating that Judge Hellerstein is unfairly biased against his client. This is a baseless and repugnant assertion from multiple vantages. As a threshold matter, the Motion is procedurally defective. Although Leichty claims to rely on Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 10 in seeking to supplement the record, that rule specifically limits the record on appeal to materials presented to the trial court. The record contains no indication that Leichty attempted to submit the materials at issue to the district court. Alternatively, he invokes judicial notice as a basis for our consideration of materials attached to the Motion, but the allegedly new “facts” are not remotely the type of uncontestable facts of which we may take judicial notice. See Fed. R. Evid. 201. These technical deficiencies, however, pale alongside the ludicrous arguments Leichty makes in support of the Motion. Leichty’s main argument is, in sum, that Judge Hellerstein is partial to defendants and must recuse himself because his adult son, an attorney, at one point was employed by a law firm in Israel that at some time represented two companies that might have an indirect connection to some of this case’s defendants. He also makes reference to certain religiously-oriented philanthropic activities of the family, which he says evince partiality. Section 455(a) of Title 28 of the United States Code provides in pertinent part that a federal judge “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” 28 U.S.C. §455(a) (emphasis added); see also Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540, 548 (1994). Leichty’s argument that such an attenuated chain of relationships calls Judge Hellerstein’s impartiality into question is patently frivolous. In filing this motion, Leichty had to know that he was proceeding “without the slightest chance of success.” Gallop I, 642 F.3d at 8 370 (internal quotation marks omitted). This leads us to the question of why the Motion was brought. Leichty’s behavior belies the possibility that he was motivated by a belief that the Motion would be successful. Rather than making good-faith legal arguments, his Motion seems to us to be nothing more than a vehicle for making personal slurs against Judge Hellerstein and his family. In fact, on closer observation, Leichty’s real argument is that Judge Hellerstein cannot be impartial because he is Jewish. The papers filed in support of the Motion reflect anti-Semitism in a raw and ugly form. For a private citizen to make such spurious and offensive suggestions is bad enough. For an attorney admitted to this Court to make them in court pleadings is unpardonable. We note, of course, that no law or court may prevent Leichty from believing what he chooses to believe. In most contexts, he may also say the things he says. What he is not allowed to do, however, is to let his misguided views cloud his judgment regarding what arguments may properly be made to this Court. In other words, we do not sanction him here for harboring antiSemitic views. Rather, we impose sanctions against him because he allowed those views to prompt him to submit frivolous and grossly insulting arguments to this Court. See Gallop III, 660 F.3d at 585-86 (sanctioning an attorney who allowed “his emotional reaction . . . to further undermine his legal judgment and interfere with his duty to provide thoughtful and reasoned advice to his client”). To deter Leichty from acting similarly in the future, and to warn other lawyers about the consequences of similarly egregious behavior, we impose sanctions on Attorney Leichty in the form of double the costs incurred by Ransmeier in responding to the Motion. 9