Court Opinion

ID: 9483979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:37:11.644977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:57.030245
License: Public Domain

WIGGINS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
My dissent is occasioned by the timing of Pacific Union Company’s motion for sanctions. It is apparent that Pacific Union brought one motion to impose sane-*598tions, and did so after it had obtained a judgment against Pan-Pacific and Low Ball Television Company. In that motion, Pacific Union argued convincingly that the Pan-Pacific suit was frivolous. It was awarded the total amount of the fees that had theretofore been incurred.
I believe this procedure is not authorized by Rule 11. The Rule directs that all papers be signed and the signature shall constitute a certification by the signer that, among other things, the paper is not filed for an improper purpose. If this requirement is not met, the court may impose an appropriate sanction.
Here, the court misused the power given it by Rule 11. It improperly reassessed the performance of opposing counsel and the overall merits of his client’s lawsuit at the time the case was over. The Rule does not ordinarily permit the parties to wait until the lawsuit is over, and then for the first time to seek to shift the cost of the lawsuit to the losing party by characterizing his client’s claim as frivolous. The proper procedure would have been to file a motion for sanctions when it was first revealed that the complaint was frivolous.
We have addressed this issue before. In Matter of Yagman, 796 F.2d 1165 (9th Cir.1986), the prevailing defendant filed a motion for Rule 11 sanctions after he obtained judgment against the plaintiff. The basis of the motion was that the plaintiff’s claim was frivolous from the start. The defendant was awarded $250,000.00 as a sanction.
The procedure utilized ... in imposing sanctions, therefore, was essentially an accumulation of all perceived misconduct, from filing through trial, with a reevaluated determination that it was far more serious than appeared at the time. The result of this procedure is a single post-judgment retribution in the form of a massive sanctions award.
The most obvious defect in this procedure is that it flies in the face of the primary purpose of sanctions, which is to deter subsequent abuses. This policy is not well served by tolerating abuses during the course of an action and then punishing the offender after the trial is at an end. A proper sanction assessed at the time, of a transgression will ordinarily have some measure of deterrent effect on subsequent abuses and resultant sanctions. Such ‘prompt action helps enhance the credibility of the rule and, by deterring further abuse, achieve its therapeutic purpose.’ ... Moreover, the accumulation procedure used at bar ‘tends to perpetuate the waste and delay which the rule[s are] intended to eliminate.’ We are convinced that the magnitude of the sanctions in this case is directly related to the use of this procedure. Abuses were allowed to pass unchecked and, thus, undeterred, and attorney’s fees were allowed to accumulate. As a consequence, we are left faced with an unusually large sanctions amount that will, contrary to the policy, impart absolutely no deterrent value to this case.
796 F.2d at 1183.
Our court reversed the sanction award. We recognized that we were not establishing a rule appropriate for all cases, but in Matter of Yagman, the procedure adopted by the trial court did not further the goal of deterrence underlying Rule 11. We should not condone a similar sanction here.
I dissent.