Court Opinion

ID: 9477126
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:14:50.811003+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:42.636616
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I concur in the judgment and in most of the opinion of the court, I write separately to note that I have some doubt as to whether this is the kind of case in which the appellant can prevail on appeal only if he shows that the district court abused its discretion. It seems to me that the district court’s conclusion that the filing of the motion for a stay violated Rule 11 may well have been a legal conclusion that we ought to review under a de novo standard. See Brown v. Federation of State Medical Boards, 830 F.2d 1429, 1434 (7th Cir.1987) (“[W]e review de novo the district court’s legal conclusion....”) Cf. Westmoreland v. CBS, Inc., 770 F.2d 1168, 1175 (D.C.Cir.1985) (“[A] decision whether the pleading or motion is legally sufficient ... involves a question of law and receives this court’s de novo review.”).
Rule 11 does not prohibit an attorney from signing a motion that has a proper purpose if the attorney reasonably believes the motion “is warranted by existing law....” Whether a motion is “warranted by existing law” is a legal question. If the district court imposed sanctions in the case at bar because it thought the appellant’s motion was not warranted by existing law, and if we think (as I do) that the district court’s understanding of the law was incorrect, we probably ought to reverse the order without reaching the abuse of discretion question.
It is true that many decisions made under Rule 11 are reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard, but I do not read either Albright v. Upjohn Co., 788 F.2d 1217 (6th Cir.1986), or INVST Financial Group, Inc. v. Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc., 815 F.2d 391 (6th Cir.) cert. denied, — U.S.-, 108 S.Ct. 291, 98 L.Ed.2d 251 (1987) as holding that this standard governs our re*254view of legal determinations made by a trial court under Rule 11. In Albright, where the basis for the defendant’s Rule 11 motion was a claim that the plaintiff “failed to reasonably investigate the facts,” 788 F.2d at 1221 n. 5, this court referred with evident approval to the standard of review analysis in Westmoreland, supra. 788 F.2d at 1221-22. In INVST (where Westmoreland was also cited, see 815 F.2d at 401), an attorney named Garratt appealed an order imposing sanctions for, among other things, filing a motion for recusal of the trial judge; Garratt contended, on appeal, that “the district court abused its discretion in imposing sanctions,” id. at 401, and although this court repeated that formulation of the standard of review, the court seems in fact to have reviewed the trial court's legal determination de novo. (“[T]here was absolutely no legal basis upon which Garratt could have reasonably believed that adverse rulings in prior cases were sufficient to show bias. * * * We conclude that Garratt violated Rule 11 by filing the motion for recusal.” Id. at 402-03.)