Court Opinion

ID: 9895301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-06 18:01:06.421709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:00.498592
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        NOV 6 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MICHAEL S. TRAYLOR,                             No. 21-56093
                                                D.C. No. 5:20-cv-01280-SVW-KK
             Plaintiffs’ Former Counsel-
             Appellant,
                                                MEMORANDUM*
 v.

U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
ET AL.,

             Defendant-Appellee.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Central District of California
                   Stephen V. Wilson, District Judge, Presiding

                          Submitted on October 17, 2023
                              Pasadena, California

Before: PAEZ and H.A. THOMAS, Circuit Judges, and RAKOFF, District Judge.**

      This is an appeal from the grant of summary judgment and award of attorney’s

fees in a case brought under the Copyright Act. The district court initially granted

the motions for summary judgment of defendants Al Gohary and the Orange County

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      **
            The Honorable Jed S. Rakoff, United States District Judge for the
Southern District of New York, sitting by designation.
Inland Empire Small Business Development Center Network (“OCIE”) based upon

the failure of plaintiffs Lethia Davis and her company, Beautiful Minds

Entrepreneurship, Inc., to provide the district court with a copy of the copyrighted

works that were purportedly infringed. Plaintiffs filed a motion for reconsideration

attaching one of the three allegedly infringed works. The district court denied that

motion, finding, among other things, that even if the work had been included with

the prior motion, it would not have changed the court’s conclusion. The district court

then ordered plaintiffs to pay defendants’ attorney’s fees pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 505

and, sua sponte, issued an order to show cause why plaintiffs’ attorney—Michael

Traylor—should not be held liable for a portion of the fee award pursuant to 28

U.S.C. § 1927. The district court ultimately awarded Gohary $75,424.50 in

attorney’s fees, of which Traylor was held liable for $31,006, and awarded OCIE

$75,613.13 in attorney’s fees, of which Traylor was held liable for $71,056.13.

Traylor is the only party remaining in this appeal. For the reasons set forth below,

we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment and award of attorney’s

fees.

        Traylor first argues that the district court erred in granting defendants’

motions for summary judgment and denying plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration.

Without these purportedly erroneous rulings, Traylor argues, no attorney’s fee award

could have been entered against him. We review a grant of summary judgment de

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novo, and a denial of a motion for reconsideration for abuse of discretion. See

Airlines for Am. v. City & Cnty. of San Francisco, 78 F.4th 1146, 1151 (9th Cir.

2023) (summary judgment); Benson v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., 673 F.3d 1207,

1211 (9th Cir. 2012) (FRCP 60(b)); Smith v. Pac. Props. & Dev. Corp., 358 F.3d

1097, 1100 (9th Cir. 2004) (FRCP 59(e)).

      “Proof of copyright infringement requires [the plaintiff] to show: (1) that he

owns a valid copyright in [the work]; and (2) that [the defendant] copied protected

aspects of the work.” Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, 952 F.3d 1051, 1064 (9th Cir.

2020) (en banc). A plaintiff “can attempt to prove [copying] circumstantially by

showing that the defendant had access to the plaintiff’s work and that the two

works share similarities probative of copying.” Id. (quoting Rentmeester v. Nike,

Inc., 883 F.3d 1111, 1117 (9th Cir. 2018)).

      To support their motions for summary judgment, defendants put forward

substantial evidence that they did not copy the allegedly infringed work, including

declarations that they had not seen the infringed work prior to the litigation, did not

have access to the infringed work, and created the purportedly infringing work years

before the creation of the allegedly infringed work. At this point, the burden shifted

to plaintiffs to demonstrate a genuine dispute of material fact. See Celotex Corp. v.

Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322–23 (1986).

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      In response, plaintiffs argued that access to the copyrighted works combined

with their substantial similarity to the infringing work was sufficient to satisfy the

element of copying. But plaintiffs failed to actually identify or provide the district

court with a copy of any work that was purportedly infringed, and thus the district

court correctly concluded that no reasonable juror could evaluate whether the work

was substantially similar such that it was copied.1 And when an allegedly infringed

work was submitted with plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration, it became clear that

the infringed and infringing works were, as the district court ultimately held, “not

remotely similar.” Further, plaintiffs’ only evidence of defendants’ access to the

infringed work was the bare assertion that the work was available on plaintiffs’

website, which was insufficient to create a dispute of fact as to access in the face of

defendants’ contrary evidence. See Art Attacks Ink, LLC v. MGA Ent. Inc., 581 F.3d

1138, 1143 (9th Cir. 2009) (“To prove access, a plaintiff must show a reasonable

possibility, not merely a bare possibility, that an alleged infringer had the chance to

view the protected work.”). Accordingly, the district court did not err in granting

1
       On appeal, Traylor asserts that the allegedly infringed work was attached as
an exhibit to a deposition transcript filed in support of OCIE’s motion for summary
judgment. But the PowerPoint slides Traylor cites are the allegedly infringing work
created by Gohary, not the infringed work purportedly created by plaintiffs. The fact
that, even on appeal, Traylor is unable to clearly identify what work was purportedly
infringed further demonstrates the correctness of the district court’s rulings.

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defendants’ motions for summary judgment and denying plaintiffs’ motion for

reconsideration.

       Traylor next argues that the district court erred by awarding attorney’s fees

pursuant to the Copyright Act. See 17 U.S.C. § 505. The Copyright Act “grants

courts wide latitude to award attorney’s fees based on the totality of circumstances

in a case.” Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 579 U.S. 197, 203 (2016). Such an

award is reviewed for abuse of discretion. See Maljack Prods., Inc. v. GoodTimes

Home Video Corp., 81 F.3d 881, 889 (9th Cir. 1996). Here, the district court

correctly identified the six non-exclusive factors to be considered and found that

each weighed in favor of awarding attorney’s fees. Traylor simply asserts that the

district court was wrong in making these findings but offers no real explanation as

to why this is so. Accordingly, we hold that the district court’s award of attorney’s

fees was not an abuse of discretion.

      Finally, Traylor argues that the district court abused its discretion by requiring

him to personally satisfy a portion of the attorney’s fee award as a sanction.

Imposition of sanctions pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1927 is appropriate “when an

attorney knowingly or recklessly raises a frivolous argument, or argues a meritorious

claim for the purpose of harassing an opponent.” B.K.B. v. Maui Police Dep’t, 276

F.3d 1091, 1107 (9th Cir. 2002) (quoting In re Keegan Mgmt. Co., Sec. Litig., 78

                                         5                                   21-56093
F.3d 431, 436 (9th Cir. 1996)). We review such an award for abuse of discretion.

See Wages v. I.R.S., 915 F.2d 1230, 1235 (9th Cir. 1990).

      The district court’s imposition of sanctions was supported by substantial

evidence in the record. The district court found that Traylor never produced two of

the three allegedly copyrighted works that form the basis of this litigation, produced

the third over a year after the case was commenced, and continued to litigate the case

even though the work Traylor produced was nothing like the allegedly infringing

work. From this, the district court concluded that “Traylor either deliberately refused

to produce the alleged ‘works’ at the heart of this case or . . . he deliberately

continued to litigate long after it became clear the ‘works’ never existed in the first

place. In either scenario, his conduct is unreasonable and vexatious . . . [and] evinces

bad faith.”

      The district court also identified numerous other instances of unreasonable

conduct by Traylor. For example, Gohary had previously sought and obtained

summary judgment because Traylor failed to respond to certain requests for

admission that were then deemed admitted. The district court granted plaintiffs’ first

motion for relief from judgment based on Traylor’s representation that then-

unserved defendant OCIE had critical information. Traylor promised to “pursue this

matter with diligence” going forward, but then made no attempt to depose OCIE and

obtained no useful evidence from OCIE.

                                         6                                   21-56093
      To date, Traylor has offered no valid explanation for the conduct described in

the district court’s sanctions order. Instead, he argues on appeal that the positions he

raised in the litigation were not entirely frivolous, and so sanctions were

inappropriate absent a finding of an intent to harass. See B.K.B., 276 F.3d at 1107

(“[R]eckless nonfrivolous filings, without more, may not be sanctioned.”). But even

assuming arguendo that the case was not entirely frivolous from the outset and that

at least some of the litigation positions Traylor initially advanced were non-

frivolous, this fact is reflected in the fee award, which required Traylor only to pay

those fees incurred after the district court granted plaintiffs’ first motion for relief

from judgment. The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding Traylor’s

conduct past that point “multiplie[d] the proceedings in [this] case unreasonably and

vexatiously.” 28 U.S.C. § 1927.

      AFFIRMED.

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