Court Opinion

ID: 9478100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:40:06.304593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:14.382363
License: Public Domain

HUGHES, District Judge,
dissenting in part:
Although I join fully the jurisdictional decision and reasoning, I cannot concur in the portion of the opinion that remands the award of sanctions for further findings.
The process of imposing sanctions has three steps. First, the respondent must be given notice of the abuse for which sanctions are sought. Second, he must have an opportunity to be heard in response. Third, the abuse and the imposition must be supported by the record. The only issue here is the third step, the quantification of the monetary sanction. The majority confuse whether the record supports the findings with whether there are sufficient findings.
The record is not limited to the trial judge’s recitations. Ferguson v. Hill, 846 F.2d 20 (5th Cir.1988). Failure to articulate the process of the evidence evaluation does not undermine the trial court’s judgment. The quantification required some evidence and an answer finding the appropriate level of compensation. If it were a jury issue, *1174the question on appeal would be whether the one answer had sufficient evidence in the record to support the amount.
The testimony that is in the record consists of affidavits from the defendants’ lawyers describing in some detail and some generality the time and efforts expended in the whole case. The fee total was $82,575. The trial court did not accept that evidence uncritically; he obviously discounted it by about 88%, awarding $22,625. The record is more than the fee affidavits and the judge’s findings. Fed.Rule of App.Pro. 10(a). We must presume that the trial court considered the course of the litigation represented by the pleadings, motions, hearings, docket entries, briefs, and other filed papers.
Although the abuses of the plaintiff and his counsel were pervasive, the record is weak on causation, but just because I would find the amount resulting from the abuses to be a lot less does not amount to an absence of either sufficiently specific findings or of evidence in the record itself. Anderson v. City of Bessemer, 470 U.S. 564, 576, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1513, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985).
The people on whom the sanction was imposed here were content to leave the record in the state we find it. It supports the judgment. They were under a duty to contradict the evidence of amount and to supply evidence of justification. They did not. This case involves neither a default nor unrepresented parties, which would be instances that may require a trial or appellate judge to use a vigorous skepticism.
On appeal, our choices are limited: If we cannot hold that the value was clearly erroneous on the evidence, we are obliged to affirm.