Court Opinion

ID: 9632017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:58:55.227028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:06.467954
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The court holds that district courts have “inherent power” 1 to make a counsel-fee award directly against a lawyer found to have instigated groundless litigation in bad faith. I join the pronouncement only insofar as the court’s imprimatur extends to (a) awarding compensation to the party litigant harmed by a lawyer’s culpable litigation conduct, (b) insulating the innocent client from liability for the lawyer’s misdeed, and (c) penalizing the oppressive, abusive or vexatious behaviour of the wrongdoing attorney by ordering compensation to be paid for the value of services attributable to the lawyer’s misconduct. I recede from the court’s mistaken notion that the authority to implement the new course charted by today’s opinion may be validly reposed in the district courts acting pursuant to their “inherent powers.”
I would hold that a party aggrieved in the course of litigation by culpable conduct of an attorney may seek an order of compensation in the district court for the value *729of legal services attributable to the lawyer’s offending demeanor. If, after hearing the application, the judge should find a basis for granting relief, the matter must then be presented for de novo review before the Supreme Court in the very same manner that other prosecutions initiated by the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Professional Responsibility Commission are submitted for this court’s exercise of its exclusive disciplinary cognizance over lawyers.
I
THE COURT HAS PLACED MISTAKEN RELIANCE ON ROADWAY EXP., INC. v. PIPER2 AS AN AUTHORITY THAT IS APPROPRIATE FOR ADOPTION IN OKLAHOMA
Today’s pronouncement confers on the district courts “inherent power” over lawyers. The court relies for authority..on Part III of the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Roadway Exp., Inc. v. Piper.3 Writing for the Court, in Part III Justice Powell declared that “[t]he power of a [trial] court over members of its bar is at least as great as its authority over litigants.” [Emphasis added.]4 The trouble with Piper is twofold. Firstly, Part III of the Court’s opinion did not, in my view, garner the requisite number of five votes;5 secondly, the analogy drawn between the powers possessed by the lower federal judiciary and those of Oklahoma trial courts is, at best, flawed. In the federal judicial structure, unlike in the Oklahoma court system, each United States district court is authorized to establish and to control its own local bar.6 In contrast, the lawyers of this state are all licensed and supervised by a single body organized centrally under the inherent power of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.7
II
THE DISTRICT COURTS OF OKLAHOMA HAVE NO INHERENT POWER OVER THE PRACTISING BAR
Although the award of counsel fees to the litigant harmed by a lawyer’s vexatious conduct may be treated as compensatory, the sanction itself clearly must be classified under a disciplinary rubric. It is imposable — much like restitution in bar proceedings — for that conduct in litigation which is found to be culpably vexatious and hence unprofessional.8 A practition*730er licensed by a state’s integrated bar may be disciplined only by the supreme court of the state acting qua the bar’s supreme and exclusive authority.9
Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1939 order that organized all legal practitioners into a unitary state bar,10 this court’s inherent power to supervise lawyers has come to be recognized as nondelegable.11 The responsibility for the exercise of disciplinary cognizance is reposed solely in the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.12 Because the function cannot be shared, no disciplinary sanction, whatever its form or origin, may be efficaciously visited on a lawyer unless it is imposed by an order of this court.
Today’s opinion launches us upon a path of private prosecutions to secure restitution from lawyers who culpably inflict harm in a litigation-related breach of discipline. The new system doubtless will spawn numerous claims asserted in multiple proceedings to redress private and public rights that arise from a single episode of misconduct. I am unwilling to countenance such a radical departure from the present procedural regime and would hence prefer to leave Oklahoma’s disciplinary cognizance, together with the ancillary jurisdiction over restitution, exclusively within the control of the Bar and of this court.
Ill
SUMMARY
The district court’s order awarding counsel fees to an aggrieved litigant for legal services attributable to vexatious conduct by a culpable lawyer must be treated on review as not more than a referee’s finding and recommendation.13 The penalized lawyer is entitled to de novo review in the same manner14 as that established for the disciplinary prosecutions by the Oklahoma Bar Association.15
For all these reasons I would accord the lawyer in this case the very same quality of review as that which governs in proceedings for imposition of bar discipline; I would accordingly treat the award under consideration here as a referee’s recommendation for imposition of a disciplinary sanction; and, after a de novo review of the proceedings, I would adopt the proposed sanction as this court’s order for administration of professional discipline.

. State courts claim as "inherent in them” those powers which, though neither granted to, nor withheld from, them by the state constitution and not found in any other source of law, must nonetheless be conceded to the judiciary as a separate department of the government because their exercise is deemed absolutely essential for the performance of the court’s constitutionally mandated mission. State v. Superior Court, 78 Ariz. 74, 275 P.2d 887, 889-890 [1954] and O'Coin's, Inc. v. Treasurer of County of Worcester, 362 Mass. 507, 287 N.E.2d 608, 613-614 [1972]; see Connors, Inherent Power of the Courts — Management Tool or Rhetorical Weapon?, Just.Sys.J., pg. 63 [1973].

. Roadway Exp., Inc. v. Piper, 447 U.S. 752, 764-765, 100 S.Ct. 2455, 2463, 65 L.Ed.2d 488 [1980].

. See footnote 2 supra.

. Roadway Exp., Inc. v. Piper, supra note 2, 447 U.S. at 766, 100 S.Ct. at 2464.

. Justices Stewart and Rehnquist expressly declined to reach the inherent-power question considered in Part III of Justice Powell’s opinion. See footnote 2 supra, 447 U.S. at 765, 100 S.Ct. at 2463; Chief Justice Burger dissented from the entire opinion; Justice Stevens expressly dissented from the "inherent-power holding" and Justice Blackmun stated that he would have opted for recognition of the trial court’s authority to tax an award against a wrongdoing lawyer under the rubric of "a component of the bad-faith exception of the American Rule authorizing recovery of attorney’s fees directly from a vexatious opposing counsel.” See footnote 2 supra, 447 U.S. at 769, 100 S.Ct. at 2465.

. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1654 and 2071; see, Frazier v. Heebe, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, et at., — U.S.-, 107 S.Ct. 2607, 96 L.Ed.2d 557 (1987).

. In Re Integration of State Bar of Oklahoma, 185 Okl. 505, 95 P.2d 113 [1939] and Tweedy v. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n, Okl., 624 P.2d 1049, 1052 [1981].
The use of inherent powers by trial courts that function within a centrally managed state judicial service has long been recognized as a fit subject for system-wide regulation. See, e.g., O'Coin’s, Inc. v. Treasurer of County of Worcester, supra note 1, 287 N.E.2d at 615.

. The conduct sanctioned here as culpable is explicitly condemned by DR-7-102(A)(l) and (2), the Code of Professional Responsibility, 5 O.S.1981 Ch. 1, App. 3, which provides:
"A. In his representation of a client, a lawyer shall not:
(1) File a suit, assert a position, conduct a defense, delay a trial, or take other action on behalf of his client when he knows or when it is obvious that such action would serve merely to harass or maliciously injure another.
(2) Knowingly advance a claim or defense that is unwarranted under existing law, except that he may advance such claim or defense if it can be supported by good faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law." [Emphasis added.]

. Taylor v. Hayes, 494 S.W.2d 737, 747 [Ky. 1973]; see also Taylor v. Hayes, 418 U.S. 488, 495, 94 S.Ct. 2697, 2701, 41 L.Ed.2d 897 [1974].

. In Re Integration of State Bar of Oklahoma, supra note 7.

. In Re Integration of State Bar of Oklahoma, supra note 7, 95 P.2d at 115, wherein the court said:
" ‘The inherent power of this court which petitioners ask us to invoke has always existed. This power is not subject to delegation_ [Emphasis added.]

. State ex rel. Okl. Bar Ass'n v. McNaughton, Okl., 719 P.2d 1279, 1282 [1986]; State ex rel. Oklahoma Bar Association v. Raskin, Okl., 642 P.2d 262, 265 [1982] and State ex rel. Oklahoma Bar Association v. Braswell, Okl., 663 P.2d 1228, 1230 [1983].

. Judicial personnel of the district courts may be utilized as referees of the Supreme Court. Application of State ex rel. Dept. of Transp., Okl., 646 P.2d 605, 609 [1982] and Ex Parte Brink, 196 Okl. 361, 162 P.2d 604 [1945].

. State ex rel. Okl.Bar Ass'n v. McNaughton, supra note 12.

. I would not dismiss this case although the petition-in-error is utterly inefficacious for the commencement of an appeal. Neither the caption nor the body of the petition designates the lawyer as the party appellant herein. The omission constitutes a fatal jurisdictional defect. See, Tisdale v. Wheeler Brothers Grain Company, Inc., Okl. 599 P.2d 1104, 1105 [1979] and Ogle v. Ogle, Okl., 517 P.2d 797 [1973]. I would overlook the patent infirmity and treat this cause as an original proceeding to approve the recommended sanction for imposition of professional discipline.