Opinion ID: 4093346
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Family Home Dispute

Text: Selling the family home appears to have proved just as contentious as selling the vacant lot. In August 2002, the accused filed a lis pendens notice on the house; his brother filed another in March 2003. Shortly thereafter, Judge Thibodeau ordered mother to vacate the home by May 10, 2003, or face sanctions. As discussed above, in May 2003, the accused then filed the property partition action in King County Superior Court seeking, among other things, to quiet title to the house and lot in mother’s favor alone. In September 2003, however, the King County Superior Court ordered a venue change to Snohomish County, noting that the Snohomish County court was still engaged in effectuating the parties’ divorce decree. In November 2003, Judge Thibodeau ordered mother to release all lis pendens notices filed against the family home and to use her best efforts to obtain releases of all the other lis pendens notices filed by her children. Mother 2 The Washington Court of Appeals would later affirm that sanction in 2005 and award attorney fees to the accused’s father as well, citing frivolousness and intransigence as contributing factors. 3 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that contempt order in an unpublished 2005 opinion, Sanai v. Sanai, 141 Fed Appx 677 (9th Cir 2005). Cite as 360 Or 497 (2016) 505 subsequently complied with that order “under protest,” but in May 2005, when the state court authorized acceptance of a pending offer on the family home, the accused’s brother filed yet another lis pendens notice against the residence. Upon learning that fact, Judge Thibodeau recused himself, explaining that he was no longer capable of impartiality in the matters being litigated by the Sanais. Before doing so, however, he pointedly noted that “under no circumstances would I give [mother] any relief in this courtroom. She doesn’t deserve it. [The accused and his brother] don’t deserve any relief. You can take it all the way to the Ninth Circuit if you want to read that, after I’ve made this record, that they’ve acted in bad faith. They’ve frustrated the entire process of this Court, and under any circumstances, any relief that [mother] would get from any court in my opinion is a windfall. You can quote that to the next judge that’s going to hear it.” See Sanai v. Sanai, 2005 WL 1593488, 1 n 2 (W.D. Wash) (unpublished) (quoting transcript from state trial court proceeding). C. Post-Dissolution Motions and Marriage Dissolution Appeal While stalling the sale of the house and lot with the filing of lis pendens notices, the accused pursued his mother’s appeal of the dissolution decree and filed a series of motions in both the trial court and the Washington Court of Appeals. In the home and vacant lot disputes set out above, the accused had initially filed multiple “emergency motions” related to the dissolution decree. Those motions included various requests for relief, including stays, but all were found to be either frivolous or otherwise without merit. The accused also filed multiple motions with the trial court seeking sanctions and protective orders, based on an allegation that his father had revealed confidential health information about mother. In August 2002, the accused renewed those allegations in a similar motion tendered to the Washington Court of Appeals. The appellate court denied that motion on the grounds that the matter had to be pursued in the trial court. The accused quickly filed another motion and scheduled a hearing in the trial court. As with 506 In re Sanai his previous motions, the accused sought a protective order and sanctions based on an allegedly improper disclosure of confidential patient information. This time, however, he targeted his father’s former attorney. At the appointed time in September 2002, that attorney appeared, but the accused did not. As a result, the trial court ordered $500 in sanctions against the accused and his mother. In October 2002, the accused filed additional motions with the Washington Court of Appeals, including a renewed request for a protective order against his father. The resulting court order not only denied the accused’s motion but also expressly warned that “counsel is on notice that frivolous motion practice in this court could lead to sanctions.” The accused moved to modify that ruling, albeit without success. Despite that warning—and the previous sanctions that had already been imposed against the accused and his mother—in January 2003, the accused moved in the Washington Court of Appeals for discretionary review of, among other things, the orders (1) disqualifying him from representing his mother and (2) holding his mother in contempt. In referring those motions to an appellate panel for its consideration, one appellate commissioner noted that “the ongoing appellate litigation is spawning inordinate management problems for the trial court, not to mention expenses for the respondent.” In March 2003, the Washington Court of Appeals dismissed the accused’s motions and, in the process, made its sanctions warning more concrete: “We caution that any future frivolous motions will result in sanctions.” In April 2003, the accused filed the opening brief in mother’s appeal from the trial court’s marriage dissolution decree. The Washington Court of Appeals denied leave to argue the matter and, in an unpublished December 2003 decision, held the appeal to be frivolous and filed for purposes of delay. The court imposed a $10,000 sanction against his mother. Mother sought review of that decision in the Washington Supreme Court, and, in March 2004, the accused’s brother began inundating the court with a flurry of review-related motions. The court went on to deny review of that matter, as well as all of the accompanying motions, Cite as 360 Or 497 (2016) 507 in November 2004. At the same time, the court imposed a $4,000 sanction against the accused’s mother, again for frivolous filings and causing delay. D. Washington Supreme Court Filings and Related Motions In April 2003—at about the same time as he was filing the opening brief in mother’s dissolution appeal—the accused also filed a motion with the Washington Supreme Court for discretionary review of the rulings concerning the alleged improper disclosure of his mother’s confidential health information. One week later, he followed that motion with another seeking to stay the original trial court order requiring mother to vacate the family home. Shortly thereafter, he filed a similar motion with the Washington Court of Appeals, requesting review of the same trial court order. A Washington Court of Appeals commissioner ruled, however, that the court would not act, absent a showing that the second motion was somehow different from the motion pending before the Washington Supreme Court. Despite the fact that his motion to stay the order to vacate was still pending with the Washington Supreme Court, the accused filed yet another motion with that body, this time seeking to revise the trial court’s order. The accused’s motions, however, were uniformly denied, as was his subsequent request for clarification. In the weeks that followed, the accused continued filing multiple motions with the Washington Supreme Court, among them yet another request for a protective order based on the alleged disclosure of mother’s health information—the same claim that had been rejected multiple times by various Washington courts and for which the accused had previously been sanctioned. In June 2003, a Washington Supreme Court com- missioner ruled that the accused’s filings would not be considered by the court, denied the accused’s original motion for discretionary review, and dismissed the proceedings. Nevertheless, the accused spent the next several months continuing to file a barrage of motions with the Washington Supreme Court. Finally, in September 2003, the court’s chief justice denied all the accused’s pending requests— including a motion to modify the ruling denying review— and imposed sanctions of $1,000 jointly and severally on the 508 In re Sanai accused and his mother. All told, the dissolution case had taken eight years to be resolved in the Washington courts. The Snohomish County dissolution proceedings alone had generated more than 800 docket entries.4 At about the same time as the dissolution case ended, the Washington Supreme Court forwarded the matter of the accused’s conduct to the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA). E. Actions Against Judicial Officers Following the Washington Supreme Court’s adverse rulings in the matters described above, the accused and his mother filed suit in federal court against the various judicial officers who had ruled against them at both the appellate and trial court levels. In December 2003, the federal district court dismissed the pair’s action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, characterizing it as an “attempt to obtain review of unfavorable decisions of the Washington state courts by wrapping their state law-based challenges in the fabric of federal constitutional claims.” The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment in an unpublished 2005 opinion. The accused also filed an action against the chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court, alleging that the accused’s civil rights had been violated in connection with the disciplinary proceedings in Washington. In 2008, the Ninth Circuit remanded that suit for dismissal. F. State and Federal Wiretap Actions, Miscellaneous Claims, and Subpoenas Approximately one year before the Snohomish County court’s 2002 finalization of the Sanais’ divorce, the accused, along with his mother, brother, and two other siblings, began what would become a protracted series of state and federal actions filed against the accused’s father, father’s Internal Medicine and Cardiology (IMC) practice, and IMC employee McCullough. Those actions alleged, among other things, that father had unlawfully intercepted and recorded various family communications from the IMC Seattle offices. The first such action—filed in Los Angeles County 4 The Washington Supreme Court denied review of the final appellate matter arising from those divorce proceedings in 2010. Cite as 360 Or 497 (2016) 509 Superior Court—was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. In the second—filed in August 2002 in King County Superior Court—the trial court would eventually conclude that there was no evidence to support the wiretapping claims that the accused had leveled against his father. In October 2002—despite have recently initiated their King County wiretap action—the accused and his co-plaintiffs sued the defendants in federal court as well, proffering claims of, among other things, illegal wiretapping. In addition to seeking more than $9,000,000 in damages, the accused and his co-plaintiffs also moved for an injunction and attempted to attach the family’s vacant lot in an effort to enjoin disposition of that property pending resolution of their federal claims. After district court Judge Zilly denied injunctive relief, however, the accused and his brother filed a second federal wiretapping complaint in December 2002. As already noted above, based on that second action, the accused’s brother filed another lis pendens notice, violating state court Judge Thibodeau’s earlier order to the contrary. In March 2003, the accused’s second wiretapping action was reassigned to Judge Zilly given its similarity to the first action brought by the accused and his co-plaintiff family members. When the lis pendens notice arising from that second action came to Judge Zilly’s attention, it resulted in the previously noted federal contempt sanction—$2,500 to the court and $3,400 in attorney fees—levied against the accused and his mother. By June 2003, the accused and his co-plaintiffs had filed a third amended complaint in their federal action. Shortly thereafter, the accused issued a subpoena to the Whatcom Educational Credit Union, signing it as the attorney for plaintiff Ingrid Buron Sanai, the accused’s sister. That subpoena sought account statements from 1990 onward for IMC employee McCullough, one of the defendants named in the accused’s federal lawsuit. In issuing the subpoena, however, the accused violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by failing to provide prior notice of the subpoena to McCullough’s attorney. See FRCP 45(a)(4) (requiring subpoenas for the production of documents to be preceded by 510 In re Sanai notice to the parties before they are issued and served). As a result, Judge Zilly quashed the accused’s subpoena in July 2003. The accused had nevertheless procured a host of other discovery materials by using similar subpoenas in other state and federal courts, a fact that had placed the subpoenas beyond Judge Zilly’s jurisdiction to quash. In response, the defendants filed motions for protective orders, which Judge Zilly referred to a federal magistrate. In October 2003, the magistrate found that a large number of the subpoenas signed and used by the accused had been calculated to harass the opposing parties, rather than to lead to the discovery of relevant evidence. The magistrate then ordered the accused to (1) refrain from issuing any further subpoenas of the kind described in the magistrate’s order without prior court approval; (2) return all previously acquired documents to the defendants; and (3) retain no copies of those materials. The accused proceeded to violate that protective order in several ways. First, he failed to return—and continued to use—documents that he had acquired through improperly issued subpoenas. He explained his actions in that regard by arguing that, “[o]nce Plaintiffs received the discovery, Plaintiffs were free to use it. Magistrate Judge Theiler’s order to return the discovery was too late. The cat is out of the bag.” Second, despite the order barring him from issuing similar subpoenas without prior court approval, in October 2004, the accused signed another subpoena as the attorney for his sister. In issuing that subpoena to an insurance company for, among other things, documents containing the names of his father or McCullough, the accused once again violated FRCP 45(a)(4) by failing to provide notice to McCullough’s attorney before serving the subpoena. In January 2005, Judge Zilly granted the defen- dants’ motion for sanctions related to the insurance company subpoena and awarded defendants $1,740 in attorney fees. In doing so, Judge Zilly expressly categorized the accused’s failure to provide opposing counsel with advance notice of Cite as 360 Or 497 (2016) 511 the subpoena as “misconduct.” In addition, Judge Zilly disqualified the accused from further participating as counsel in the matter. As noted above, the accused’s third amended federal complaint had been filed in June 2003. Like its predecessors, that complaint contained a variety of claims in addition to the wiretapping allegations discussed above, including: • Libel claims based on bar complaints that the accused’s father and his lawyer had filed with the WSBA regarding the accused’s conduct as a lawyer. The accused had included a similar claim as part of the wiretapping action filed earlier in King County Superior Court, but the WSBA had subsequently informed the accused that Washington State’s Rules for Enforcement of Lawyer Conduct (ELC) barred such claims. See ELC 2.12 (providing that communications to the WSBA are “abso- lutely privileged and no lawsuit predicated thereon may be instituted against any grievant, witness, or other person providing information.”) Despite notice of that fact, the accused nevertheless raised the same libel claim again as part of his federal action. • Claims based on alleged disclosures of mother’s confidential health information. As discussed above, the accused’s pursuit of those claims at the state level had already resulted in sanctions from both the trial court and the Washington Court of Appeals. The accused nevertheless asserted the same allegations as part of his federal complaint. • Claims brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The accused originally alleged that IMC had committed ERISA violations against his mother as a beneficiary of IMC’s retirement plan and against himself as a “derivative beneficiary.” Although Judge Zilly ruled that the accused had no standing to make such a claim for himself, the accused nevertheless continued to assert ERISA-related allegations in his own name. In November 2003, Judge Zilly granted summary judgment to the defendants on the libel claims noted above citing, in part, the privilege contained in the ELC against lawsuits based on communications to the bar. Nine months 512 In re Sanai later—in July 2004—Judge Zilly denied the accused and his co-plaintiffs leave to file a fourth amended complaint. The accused, his brother, and mother responded by filing yet another federal action in the District Court for the Western District of Washington. Their new action was quickly reassigned to Judge Zilly, who dismissed their first two claims as substantially identical to the libel claims that had been previously disposed of on summary judgment in 2003. For refiling the libel claims, Judge Zilly subse- quently imposed sanctions under FRCP 11 of $5,000 each against the accused, his brother, and his mother. See FRCP 11(b) and (c) (providing that (1) by presenting pleadings in federal court, attorneys certify that pleadings are not made for improper purpose and (2) sanctions are authorized when rule is violated). In doing so, Judge Zilly stated that the new federal complaint “re-alleges frivolous causes of action that were previously dismissed by the Court. Plaintiffs were aware that this Court had previously rejected their legal and factual arguments, and had the benefit of this Court’s prior Orders when drafting [their] new Complaint.” In January 2005, Judge Zilly ordered the accused and his co-plaintiffs to show cause why their continued misconduct should not warrant dismissal of their federal complaints with prejudice. In July 2005, Judge Zilly rejected their arguments and dismissed with prejudice all their remaining federal claims. Noting that the plaintiffs had already been collectively sanctioned around $130,000 in both federal and state courts, Judge Zilly observed that they had nonetheless opted to “persist in their misconduct. Plaintiffs’ conduct shows that they will not respond to sanctions. Clearly, no other sanction the Court might impose, except for dismissal itself, would be effective in remedying this misconduct.” In addition to dismissal of those federal claims, in November 2005, Judge Zilly imposed monetary sanctions on the accused, his brother, and his mother totaling $273,437.00. In March 2007, the trio garnered a further sanction: $14,041.50 in attorney fees for the ERISA claims contained in their third amended complaint. Judge Zilly Cite as 360 Or 497 (2016) 513 found that the ERISA claim had been brought in bad faith without any reasonable basis in law or fact. As in the state-based dissolution case, the volume of filings in the federal court cases was enormous. According to the Bar, the first of the federal cases that the accused and his co-plaintiffs filed compromised by itself 790 docket entries. Judge Zilly described the litigation techniques employed by the accused, his brother, and his mother in their federal court actions as follows: “Plaintiffs’ conduct in this litigation has been an indescribable abuse of the legal process, unlike anything this Judge has experienced in more than 17 years on the bench and 26 years in private practice: outrageous, disrespectful, and in bad faith. Plaintiffs have employed the most abusive and obstructive litigation tactics this Court has ever encountered, all of which are directed at events and persons surrounding the divorce of [the] Sanai[s], including parties, lawyers, and even judges. Plaintiffs have filed scores of frivolous pleadings, forcing baseless and expensive litigation.    “Plaintiffs have flatly refused to obey Orders of this Court, to cooperate with discovery, and to comply with their obligations under the Federal Rules. They have refused to appear for depositions and respond to discovery. When deposing opposing parties, their conduct has been abusive and disrespectful. They have intercepted and wiretapped the phone calls of other represented parties in this litigation. They have actively and improperly interfered with discovery, and required this Court to intervene all too frequently.” See Sanai v. Sanai, 2005 WL 1593488, 1 (WD Wash) (unpublished). In July 2010, the Ninth Circuit issued an unpub- lished decision affirming dismissal of the plaintiffs’ federal claims. Sanai v. Sanai, 408 Fed Appx 1 (9th Cir 2010). G. Washington Disciplinary Proceedings The Washington State Bar initiated disciplinary proceedings against the accused in 2004, two years after having admitted him to practice in Washington. Following a series of delays, a hearing was finally scheduled for April 514 In re Sanai 2007. Several days before the hearing, however, the accused sought a continuance on the ground that he was suffering from dangerously high blood pressure. Although that condition appeared to have been confirmed in a signed statement from the accused’s physician, the hearing officer nevertheless denied the continuance and conducted a full hearing in the accused’s absence. The hearing officer would later recommend disbarment for the accused, a recommendation that was unanimously adopted by the Washington State Bar’s disciplinary board. But in 2009, a five-member majority of the Washington Supreme Court reversed that outcome, holding that the hearing officer had abused his discretion in failing to grant the accused’s requested continuance. In re Disciplinary Proceeding Against Sanai, 167 Wash 2d 740, 225 P3d 203 (2009) (Sanai I). Four members of that court, however, joined in a dissenting opinion authored by