Opinion ID: 1459362
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Frivolous Claims

Text: Plaintiff offers several explanations of why his claims are not frivolous, none of which are persuasive. First, plaintiff argues before our Court, as he did before the District Court, that his claims could not have been frivolous because the State defendants undertook substantial efforts to defend themselves. See, e.g., J.A. 448 (Pl.'s Aff. in Supp. of Mot. to Reargue, Feb. 15, 2007, ¶¶ 108-109) (arguing that, had plaintiff's claims actually been frivolous, there would be no need for the extensive legal research and drafting and work ... [in] preparing Defendants' motion[s] made before this Court); Appellant's Br. 41 (Either the legal research hours were unnecessary if the case were totally frivolous, or there was a valid basis and legal arguments the AG had to address.). We disagree. Frivolous claims require a defending party to expend time and resources on needless litigation. Plaintiff's argument illustrates the need for attorney's fees as a form of sanctions; it does not explain why the claims in the instant case were non-frivolous. Plaintiff has also asserted that his claims are not frivolous because the Eleventh Amendment is not static. Rather, according to plaintiff, sovereign immunity is an evolving field of jurisprudence. Plaintiff cites many cases to support this theory, but none of them are on point. For example, he supplies multiple citations to cases concerning qualified immunity that have no bearing on the issue of Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity. See Appellant's Br. at 34-35. Later in his brief, plaintiff refers to principles of law clearly enunciated by Judge Munson in Thompson v. New York, 487 F.Supp. 212 (N.D.N.Y.1979), which concerns the ongoing dispute between certain counties in upstate New York and the Oneida Indian Nation. In that case, Judge Munson recognized that § 1983 was not intended to create a waiver of a State's Eleventh Amendment immunity merely because an action could be brought under that section against state officers, rather than against the State itself, id. at 221 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted), and that a State is not a `person' within the meaning of the statute, id. at 226. Accordingly, Judge Munson dismissed claims against the State of New York, State Police Department, and the Superintendent of State Police ... in his official capacity. Id. at 226. Although Judge Munson suggested thirty years ago that, were he writing on a clean slate, he would conclude that Congress overrode the states' sovereign immunity in the Civil Rights Act of 1871, see id., he acknowledged that the Supreme Court had roundly rejected his view. See id.; see also Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 342, 99 S.Ct. 1139, 59 L.Ed.2d 358 (1979) ([N]either logic, the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, nor the legislative history of the 1871 Act compels, or even warrants, a leap... to the conclusion that Congress intended by the general language of the Act to overturn the constitutionally guaranteed immunity of the several States.). We fail to see how Thompson or any of the qualified immunity cases cited by plaintiff's counsel demonstrate that the State of New York does not possess sovereign immunity. We are left, then, with plaintiff's bare assertion that sovereign immunity does not bar his claims against New York State. On this basis, we must agree with the District Court that the claims brought by plaintiff in this lawsuit were not well researched and were frivolous in light of the well-established case law addressing the federal civil rights statutes and Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence, to say nothing of the numerous times that the judges in th[e Northern] District have instructed [plaintiff's counsel] about the relevant principles in these areas of the law. Gollomp V, 2007 WL 433361 at , 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8524, at .