Court Opinion

ID: 9479126
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:09:02.046044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:50.562349
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree that the judgments in Nos. 88-2791 and 88-3179 should be affirmed. Whether to allow discovery in connection with a Rule 11 fee award is, of course, a matter committed to the sound discretion of the trial court. I do not believe that, in No. 87-2791, Kramer has sustained the heavy burden of demonstrating that the district court abused its discretion by refusing to allow the Rule 11 fee proceedings to be conducted as a “mini-trial.” In No. 88-3179, the district court was quite justified in finding that Kramer had not demonstrated “excusable neglect” for its failure to file timely objections to the magistrate’s report, since it was undisputed that an attorney purporting to be Kramer’s local counsel had received the magistrate’s recommendations in a timely fashion. I do not believe, however, that No. 89-1014, which involves a challenge to the amount of the Rule 11 fee award, is controlled by Hays v. Sony Corp. of America, 847 F.2d 412, 419 (7th Cir.1988), and Gorenstein Enterprises, Inc. v. Quality Care-USA, Inc., 874 F.2d 431 (7th Cir.1989). I therefore respectfully dissent as to No. 89-1014 and the award of $6,931.31 involved in that case.
Hays and Gorenstein Enterprises seem to be based on the principle that, in general, any attempt to justify on appeal conduct which has been found to be unjustifiable is itself unjustifiable. See Gorenstein Enterprises, at 440 (“the appeal of a litigant whose position in the district court was correctly adjudged frivolous is frivolous per se”).1 Whatever else may be said about this approach, it seems to me to be based on some finding of frivolousness. Thus, once a district court has found conduct to be frivolous, any subsequent challenges on the issue of frivolousness are deemed frivolous, or are, at least, sanction-able.
The same rationale, however, does not seem to me to extend to the amount of the sanction; I do not believe that the result in No. 89-1014 follows ineluctably from Hays and Gorenstein Enterprises. Simply because a party has engaged in frivolous conduct, it can hardly be said that the party’s good-faith contest of what the frivolous conduct cost the opposition is itself frivolous. Damages are an issue apart from liability, and Kramer is not automatically liable for the costs attendant to its *1344challenge of the amount of the Bales’ com-pensable fees. The majority’s holding essentially means that, once conduct has been found to be sanctionable, the sanctioned party must acquiesce in his victim’s request for fees, whatever the amount, on pain of suffering the imposition of additional sanctions attendant to a good-faith challenge to the amount of fees requested. On this point, the majority result seems to me in conflict with Glass v. Pfeffer, 849 F.2d 1261, 1266 (10th Cir.1988), which holds that sanctions should not be awarded as a matter of course in connection with a hearing set to determine the amount of allowable fees. Glass allowed an award of such sanctions merely because in that case the sanctioned party was found to be guilty of dilatory or abusive tactics or bad faith. No such finding has been made here.

. While this may not be the only theory explaining the outcomes in Hays and Gorenstein, it is the analysis most consonant with the function of Rule 11 as a sanctions statute designed to deter and punish frivolous litigation tactics. Unlike fee-shifting statutes, such as 42 U.S.C. section 1988, which serve as vehicles'for compensating "private attorneys general” who have vindicated important federal interests, Rule 11 is primarily intended to punish violators, and seeks only indirectly to compensate the victim of the offender’s misconduct. The majority’s "make whole” rationale, founded on an analogy to fee-shifting statutes, is inconsistent with the fundamentally punitive cast of Rule 11.