Judge Won’t Sanction Lawyer for Angry Calls, Says Fee Feud Must End

Legal Ethics

Judge Won’t Sanction Lawyer for Angry Calls, Says Fee Feud Must End

Posted Jul 24, 2008, 08:28 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A federal judge in Philadelphia has refused to sanction a lawyer for making angry phone calls to his opponent in a fee dispute.

U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois said in two opinions last week that lawyer John Peoples had not left a phone message since June 2006 so he would not be held in contempt for violating a temporary restraining order, the Legal Intelligencer reports. The May 2005 order had barred Peoples from having any contact or communication with lawyer Howard Langer.

The two men settled their fee dispute in 2004 when Langer agreed to pay Peoples $2.9 million out of a fund for attorney fees in a class action that alleged price fixing in the market for corrugated paper products. As liaison counsel, Langer was authorized by DuBois to decide how to distribute the money.

In the June 2006 phone message, Peoples said: "I didn't forget you." In a hearing, Peoples said he left the voice mail but it wasn’t threatening, the story says. When asked why he left the message Peoples said: "It's just almost every night I think about this case, and I just bubble over with anger and it's--you can't make it go away."

In his opinions, DuBois denied all pending motions in the case, including a request for sanctions against Peoples and a request that DuBois recuse himself for an alleged improper relationship with Langer.

"The myriad of motions relate to a fee dispute between Peoples and Langer that was settled almost four years ago,” DuBois wrote. “This drawn out personal quarrel between the two of them must end. It warrants no further imposition on the judicial system."

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Posted by kay sieverding - 1 month, 1 week, 5 days, 1 hour, 17 minutes ago

I don’t see why Peoples doesn’t have access to Rule 60. Recently Dickie Scruggs pled guilty to attempted bribery in a dispute over attorney fees. What if some evidence of bribery surfaces? For instance, from an exit interview with a court clerk, a divorce proceeding, a dying confession, or an income tax investigation? Under Rule 60b(4) a judgment can be found void at any time due to lack of due process. For instance, I was ordered to pay Faegre & Benson even though they didn’t file a rule 11 motion or a counterclaim and even though there weren’t any rule 11 c. 6. orders.

I think it sounds like Langer and Judge DuBois are trying to change the subject from the contract for fee division to Peoples’ personality. I had a land/boundary dispute, and the other party tried to describe it as a personal feud when the main issues were land, land access, and land development. It sounds like Peoples could have received a lot more than he did. What’s the matter with Peoples trying to get as much as he was entitled to?

Since [United Mine Workers] the Court has erected substantial procedural protections in other areas of contempt law… Lower federal courts and state courts such as the trial court here nevertheless have relied on United Mine Workers to authorize a relatively unlimited judicial power to impose noncompensatory civil contempt fines…. But the contempt power also uniquely is “liable to abuse.” Bloom, 391 U.S., at 202, quoting Ex parte Terry,… Unlike most areas of law, where a legislature defines both the sanctionable conduct and the penalty to be imposed, civil contempt proceedings leave the offended judge solely responsible for identifying, prosecuting, adjudicating, and sanctioning the contumacious conduct. Contumacy “often strikes at the most vulnerable and human qualities of a judge’s temperament,” Bloom, supra, at 202, and its fusion of legislative, executive, and judicial powers “summons forth . . . the prospect of ‘the most tyrannical licentiousness… Our jurisprudence in the contempt area has attempted to balance the competing concerns of necessity and potential arbitrariness by allowing a relatively unencumbered contempt power when its exercise is most essential, and requiring progressively greater procedural protections when other considerations come into play… (the judicial contempt power is a “power of self-defense,” limited to sanctioning “those who interfere with the orderly conduct of [court] business or disobey orders necessary to the conduct of that business")… Summary adjudication of indirect contempts is prohibited, e.g., Cooke v. United States… the risk of erroneous deprivation from the lack of a neutral factfinder may be substantial…. the court effectively policed petitioners’ compliance with an entire code of conduct that the court itself had imposed…” INTERNATIONAL UNION v. JOHN L. BAGWELL ET AL. (06/30/94)
U.S.Supreme Court
Posted by F.J. - 1 month, 1 week, 4 days, 18 hours, 37 minutes ago

Maybe #1 should get a job.
Posted by kay - 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 22 hours, 49 minutes ago

doing what?

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