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janrinok (52)
About 18 months after he lost the 2020 election, Election Conspiracist in Chief Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and dozens of other Democrats over the election he had won nearly six years earlier.
That lawsuit went nowhere. But going nowhere meant tying up a lot of the court’s time, what with Trump’s lawyers dumping 193-page complaints onto the docket and targeting more than 30 defendants with a bizarre set of allegations claiming the election, that Trump won, had been rigged. That such an alleged rigging would result in Trump’s victory suggests either the defendants secretly wanted Trump to win or, more logically, that the plaintiff was full of shit.
The district court ruled against Trump roughly six months after the lawsuit was filed, finding that it was not only not the RICO (yes, that was in there too), but it wasn’t anything else either, no matter how many words Trump’s lawyers had tossed together in exceedingly long legal filings.
The lawyers representing Trump in this ridiculous waste of publicly funded time are now being hit with sanctions by the court that had the misfortune of handling this lawsuit. They will join a long list of other lawyers currently or formerly employed by the former president who have been fined or sued for engaging in baseless lawsuits over election results.
The sanction order [PDF] helpfully lists the offending legal professionals right up front, allowing readers to avoid accidentally seeking representation from this group of lawyers who decided to shed their respectability to engage in extremely performative litigation.
Defendant Charles Dolan has moved for sanctions pursuant to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Upon review of the motion (DE 268), Plaintiff’s response (DE 270) and Defendant’s reply (DE 276), and for the reasons explained below, the motion is granted. Accordingly, sanctions shall be awarded jointly and severally against Alina Habba, Michael T. Madaio, Habba Madaio & Associates, Peter Ticktin, Jamie Alan Sasson, and The Ticktin Law Group.
That’s who is getting sanctioned. Here’s why: mainly it’s all the lying.
The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth. The following examples are indicative.
When suing someone it helps to know where they live, as this can have subject matter or personal jurisdiction significance. In this case for instance, Mr. Dolan argued that he engaged in no activities in Florida that made him susceptible to suit here. He filed an affidavit stating under oath that he lived in Virginia. His lawyers advised Mr. Trump’s lawyers of that. Moreover, the summons in this case indicated an Arlington, Virginia address and the return of service indicated he was served there. Yet the Amended Complaint alleged that Mr. Dolan was a resident of New York. The Trump lawyers’ answer:
[I]t must be noted that Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and Plaintiff’s counsel’s traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.
While alone not of great significance, this response reflects the cavalier attitude towards facts demonstrated throughout the case.
Just one of many problems with the allegations. Those are things in court cases that are supposed to be factual. These weren’t. Trump’s legal reps couldn’t seem to decide whether Dolan was the head of the Democratic National Committee, a senior Clinton Campaign official, or just someone who happened to be in the racketeering business of keeping Trump out of office. The lawsuit cherry-picked information from a government indictment in an attempt to portray Dolan’s statements to investigators as deliberate lies deployed to further a conspiracy against Trump. None of this was true and pretty much everything alleged was either provably false or entirely inaccurate.
The court sums it up this way:
In short, I find that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were warned about the lack of foundation for their factual contentions, turned a blind eye towards information in their possession, and misrepresented the Danchenko Indictment they claim as their primary support. The lawyers failed to conduct a pre-filing inquiry into the allegations against Mr. Dolan and have continued to advance Plaintiff’s false claims based upon nothing but conjecture, speculation, and guesswork. This is precisely the conduct Rule 11 is intended to deter.
[It continues....]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday November 15 2022, @07:14PM (8 children)
As I understand it, lawyers must pay their own sanctions. Their client (Trump) cannot pay the sanctions for them. The entire purpose of sanctions (punishments) against lawyers for bringing such frivolous suits, loaded with lies, is to discourage them from doing this. If you have a legitimate case with truths, bring it. If you have evidence, bring it.
While Republicans can get over Trump's sexual assaults, affairs, and vulgarity; they cannot get over Obama being black.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @09:12PM (1 child)
If you have a janrinok journal entry, bring it. Don't just plaster failed submissions on political topics.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 16 2022, @03:00PM
You're funny. Political topics get failed as submissions for the precise reason that they should be journal entries.
While Republicans can get over Trump's sexual assaults, affairs, and vulgarity; they cannot get over Obama being black.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @09:41PM (3 children)
Did you find a reference? I found this for NY State
https://ww2.nycourts.gov/rules/chiefadmin/130.shtml#101 [nycourts.gov]
Nothing there about the source of funds to pay the fine/sanction.
A small story about sanctions--in the 1980s I worked for lawyers representing a large company against product liability claims. The experiments run by my small company were contracted specifically as "in anticipation of litigation" which protected our work from discovery (by the other side/plaintiff) in any lawsuit. Here's a reference if anyone is interested in this arcane legal construction https://www.akingump.com/a/web/964/aogHb/312.pdf [akingump.com] [PDF warning]
Eventually it came out that we had run these experiments and naturally the plaintiff lawyers wanted to depose us to learn what we knew about the product. Deposition papers were served on the owner of our tiny R&D company and the lawyers we worked with took the papers to a local judge with the contract showing "in anticipation of litigation". The request for deposition was turned down. This happened several more times over a few years. Eventually the judge got sick of the whole thing and started sanctioning (fining) the plaintiff lawyers that deposed us. The word got around and the deposition papers stopped.
I won't say what the product was, but I'm still convinced that it was safe when used reasonably. The lawsuit briefs that we saw all involved people that were drunk or otherwise impaired, and shouldn't have been using that product while impaired.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2022, @05:38AM (1 child)
Like DannyB said, the entity that incurs the sanctions is responsible for them. The pertinent section in New York is 130-1.1(b) and 130-2.1(c), . This can be the party, the attorney, their firm, or a combination. Regardless of who it is against, the sanctions will specify the exact entity responsible for them. If the party is an attorney, they are ethically prohibited in every state from paying their sanctions, and in most states even if they only do it temporarily under a contingency arrangement, under their equivalent of MRPC 1.8(e). Likewise, attorneys are prohibited from charging their clients at all for sanctions against that attorney in most states because they it consider sanctioned behavior to be malpractice. In the other states, they will allow you to charge for it, but if the client refuses to pay, you cannot enforce an action against them because it is outside the scope of representation by definition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2022, @06:24AM
I butchered a sentence in that one. If the party is an attorney, they are ethically prohibited from paying their client's sanctions under 1.8(e).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 18 2022, @02:14AM
Like I can use my employer's office supplies fund to pay for my speeding tickets, right? Unless the client has signed some sort of contract that pays for fines incurred during wrong doing (which incidentally my employer could have done as well for my speeding tickets), the lawyer is on the hook. And a contract that pays for sanctions would look a bit like an admission that the lawyer planned to commit acts which would incur sanctions. That might not go well in court should it be discovered.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @10:03PM
Looks like it's slow here. So it's time for janrinok to start cranking-out threads he hopes will wake up the crowd.
Remember when there was a crowd? Long time passing.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 16 2022, @04:32PM
They're Bizzarro World lawyers, though, so this is normal.
In the Bizzarro World, lawyers pay you!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 16 2022, @02:05AM
Boy, I need a lawyer:
Wish you had an easy way of making sure you could *intentionally* seek representation from such an attorney? Now you can, thanks to a recent sanction order with a list of them conveniently right on the first page! Wow, this really is an example of the system working for the little guy.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2022, @08:06AM
In a yet further more draconian attempt to prevent suspected aristarchuses from messing with janrionok's mind, the alternative Libera chat channel has been closed? WTF, SoylentNews! How far do you plan to go with the censorship? Ncommander, do not re-enable the email system, or the IRC, as it will do nothing but encourage and enable janrinok bad behavior.