Irate Judge Blasts Typos and Errors in Filing, Slashes Fees by $154K

Attorney Fees

Irate Judge Blasts Typos and Errors in Filing, Slashes Fees by $154K

Posted Oct 8, 2008, 06:14 am CST

By Debra Cassens Weiss

A federal judge in Philadelphia blasted a lawyer for his “slip-shod submissions” to the court before slashing his requested attorney fees by about $154,000.

Senior U.S. District Judge J. William Ditter Jr. said a fee petition in a civil rights suit by Brian Puricelli was riddled with typographical and other errors, the Legal Intelligencer reports. Ditter cited these misspellings: "plaintf," "Philadehia," "attoreys," "reasonbale" and "Ubited States."

Ditter also said Puricelli’s filing misquoted a federal statute, listed the wrong court rules and referred to a U.S. Supreme Court dissenting opinion as a concurring opinion, the story says. The judge said Puricelli filed an amended fee petition three days later that corrected most of the misspellings but still contained several errors, including the wrong first name for a police officer, errors in case and statute citations, missing words and “challenging” assertions. And the new version incorrectly listed the amount of damages awarded by the jury in the civil rights suit as $15,000 instead of $150,000.

Puricelli had requested more than $180,000 in fees, but he received only about $26,000. Ditter lowered the amount to $105,000 to account for claims dismissed before trial, then cut the amount by 75 percent to account for claims rejected by the jury and what he called “questionable time records, lack of candor, slip-shod submissions," according to the story.

Puricelli told the Intelligencer that the original filing was a draft version that was accidentally uploaded to the court’s filing system. "There were mistakes, but they were caught," he told the reporter. He labeled Ditter’s opinion a “cheap shot.”

This is the second time Puricelli’s fees were lowered because of sloppy written work, the story says. A magistrate judge in a February 2004 opinion said Puricelli was “smooth” and “artful” in the courtroom, but demonstrated “complete lack of care in his written product.”

Comments

Report Abuse

Posted by Ellen Barshevsky - 1 month, 3 weeks, 1 day, 15 hours, 2 minutes ago

This judge was MEAN, and I DISSENT.

Not everybody has the same abilities or suport staff to help them.

I think the CLIENT should determine if their satisfied with the legal work, NOT the judge.

Therefore, I DISAGREE with this judge and would order payment of all fees.
Posted by logos - 1 month, 3 weeks, 1 day, 13 hours, 28 minutes ago

An attorney is an officer of the court, and if he is incapable of filing literate pleadings and motions in that capacity, maybe he should find another line of work.
Posted by moj - 1 month, 3 weeks, 1 day, 9 hours, 33 minutes ago

There are professional standards of conduct in every field. If a person does not live up to them, he or she should not expect to be sanctioned in some way. This judge is doing the right thing by holding the attorney to the high standard of the court.
Posted by moj - 1 month, 3 weeks, 1 day, 9 hours, 31 minutes ago

I mean, he or she SHOULD expect to be sanctioned. (Thank heavens this isn’t a document I’m submitting to the court—I do proofread that type of thing.)
Posted by TJ Andrews - 1 month, 3 weeks, 22 hours, 16 minutes ago

While not everyone has the same abilities or support staff, everyone has the ability to click “spell check”. Spelling errors are just plain lazy!
Posted by Caleb Boone - 1 month, 3 weeks, 21 hours, 24 minutes ago

I prefer to think the judge did not base his decision on the paperwork but on the merits. His comments on the misspellings appear to have been coincidental. Let us not be so critical that we fail to appreciate the humor in such mistakes. Just last evening I saw a letter from a judge to a pro se litigant which read: “I emphasize with your frustration.“ Hear, hear.
Posted by garbaj holden - 1 month, 3 weeks, 19 hours, 36 minutes ago

But did he do $150,000 worth of work? That is the real test. The Judge is being anal about items that are off the mark. Granted he should have spell checked and correctly cited law, but the jist of these issues is how many hours did he spend on the case and was it reasonable, not whether he is a spelling bee champ and a law journal scholar
Posted by Bill - 1 month, 3 weeks, 19 hours, 26 minutes ago

Hey Ellen B:

I THINK your CAPS key is BROKEN.

You wrote: “I think the CLIENT should determine if their satisfied with the legal work”

By “their” I assume you mean “they’re”. Watch OUT or Judge Ditter will SANCTION you.
Posted by jim da man - 1 month, 3 weeks, 19 hours, 8 minutes ago

The judge took over three times most people’s wages for that typo. I’d say he needs dethroned.
Posted by E. Lynette Denton - 1 month, 3 weeks, 18 hours, 36 minutes ago

The judge was forced to guess what this attorney meant and should not have to do that.
Posted by Einstein - 1 month, 3 weeks, 18 hours, 23 minutes ago

You am crazy!
Posted by Dred Scott - 1 month, 3 weeks, 18 hours, 17 minutes ago

This type of error is unacceptable in the Ubited States of Amerika.
Posted by GoPhillies! - 1 month, 3 weeks, 18 hours, 5 minutes ago

I practice in Philadelphia and know this judge well. He is was spot-on.
Posted by Grammatika - 1 month, 3 weeks, 18 hours ago

Ellen B., I understand why you were so quick to “dissent.“ You might well fall victim to the same sanction for your incorrect use of “their.“ Lack of care in writing is a discredit to the profession, is disrespectful to the court, and is a disservice to our clients.
Posted by Rick Parker - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 58 minutes ago

To # 1, do you seriously believe the quality of submissions to federal court should be judged by a civil rights plaintiff’s view of its quality (i.e., whether “their” satisfied with the work product)? Neither incompetent “suport” staff nor incompetence of the attorney justifies submitting pleadings to a federal court (or any other court for that matter) which would not make a passing grade on a high school English exam.
Posted by Ronnie - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 52 minutes ago

The following is a quote from Legal Intelligencer:

Slashing the fees to just 25 percent of the request was justified, Ditter said, because of “the questionable time records, lack of candor, slip-shod submissions,“ as well as Puricelli’s failure to apportion the hours he had devoted to each of the four plaintiffs, only one of whom had a successful claim.

Ellen, stop the madness. I’ve done my own time since I started practicing, and there’s nothing wrong with typing correctly and using the correct statute!! If I saw the level and depth of typos that Judge Ditter saw, ESPECIALLY since there was more than one defendant, and only one was successful—I would seriously wonder if the time was accurate. Attorney’s fees are discretionary; the judge didn’t have to award them at all.
Posted by Judicial Clerk - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 22 minutes ago

I have only been a judicial clerk for a little under two months, but I would have to agree with this judge’s ruling.

It is hard to believe how many briefs come before us, riddled with typographical/grammatical errors and wrong citations. That type of sloppy lawyering makes our job more difficult and is, at least I find, disrespectful to the court.
Posted by abogado - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 13 minutes ago

amen!
Posted by Law Student - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 11 minutes ago

Ellen, the judge is generally in a better position than the client to determine whether the legal work that has been submitted is good. This is mainly because, unlike most clients, the judge has a law degree and many years of legal experience.
Posted by Brian - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 6 minutes ago

Ellen B., An attorney, not his/her support staff, is responsible for the content of all filings. Every attorney has the ability and, more importantly, the obligation to read each document he/she files with the court.

If you’re an attorney, I hope that you do not charge your clients for similar arguments and analysis.
Posted by Rick Rutledge - 1 month, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 1 minute ago

Ellen’s post (and I don’t mean to wax “ad hominem” here) is an example of how quickly the carelessness can creep into your writing.

Not only did she use the wrong “their” (for “they’re”), she also misplaced a modifier. She said: “I think the CLIENT should determine if their satisfied with the legal work, NOT the judge.“

A careful proofread would catch her assertion that the client should be assessing the legal work, not assessing the judge. What I’m confident she meant was “I think the client, not the judge, should determine if the legal work was satisfactory.“

In the end, the client is not the consumer of the lawyer’s legal writing (at least not the bulk of it), the judge is. And if the consumer is not satisfied, the payor (and third-party beneficiary) should not be satisfied. That client may well have a malpractice claim against the attorney for such shoddy work.

As lawyers, words are our primary tools; the case law and statutes are raw materials. The words apply existing law and logic to new facts. Managed properly, words are remarkably powerful tools. Managed poorly, they are are dangerous, as lives and fortunes often hang in the balance.

No, we do not all have the same gifts or skills. But those who have the drive and passion *can* acquire the skills where they were not gifted. See Seth Godin’s recent blog on “Effort.“ http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/is-effort-a-myt.html

If you haven’t the drive to acquire the skills you lack, and if the skills you lack are critical to your profession, you have chosen your profession poorly, and the market will likely “sort you out.“
Posted by jackcatscal - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 58 minutes ago

Judge, the word is “slipshod,“ not “slip-shod.“ One day’s pay forfeited.
Posted by MKM - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 54 minutes ago

This lawyer sounds like some of the people I work with.
Posted by Ellen, please, no caps - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

Users: report Ellen’s all cap postings as abusive, as well as her non-substantive rants. Maybe then “she” will only post lucid comments. Or better yet, ABA will ban her.
Posted by A Country Lawyer - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
Posted by I Hate Ellen Barslutsky - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

Comment removed by moderator.
Posted by A Country Lawyer - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 48 minutes ago

Rick Rutledge—

Ellen also attempted to use the wrong pronoun, which she mistakenly misspelled as “their.“ She wrote, “I think the CLIENT should determine if their satisfied with the legal work, NOT the judge.“ While that does have the misplaced modifier, as you suggested, “client” is singular noun, while “they’re” is a plural pronoun contraction. She should have written, “I think the CLIENT should determine if he’s satisfied with the legal work, NOT the judge.“
Posted by Shawn - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 44 minutes ago

Well said, Mr. Rudledge.

A legal education, and the ability to read and write at a higher level is what separates attorneys from laypersons.
Posted by Rick Rutledge - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 41 minutes ago

(I sought to eliminate the ambiguity of whether “client” was singular or plural, in part due to the disagreement between American and British English on that point. “The band is..“ vs. “The band are…“ That disparity seems more pronounced in pronoun agreement than in verb agreement.)
Posted by christine - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 38 minutes ago

As a court employee and recent law grad I am appalled at some of the pleadings that attorneys file—and bill their clients for. It is an embarrassment to the profession that attorneys submit such sloppy work and damages our collective credibility in the eyes of the public at large.
Posted by Irwin Ironstone - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 20 minutes ago

Since I did not have the opportunity to review the errors, I can only say that this judge appears to have acted without justification. However, legal fees compared to the actual damages seemed grossly exaggerated.
At all levels it appears that judges interpret pleadings differently. In one recent case, Justice Stevens criticized the other justices as “fellow jurors” based upon an improper function by the justices(It appears that they were trying the case rather than reviewing the decision of the lower courts.)

After having read thousands of decisions, It still amazes me that there is no method to respond to written decisions that question a judge’s decision other than by appeal.
Some judges are very selective about “facts” and it appears they selectively build their fiction based on omissions.
I have suggested that both West Law and Lexis be allowed to post responses to some of these fairy tails! (When there is unfettered control then there are abuses. The number of jury trials is less than 5% of all actions. The number of jury trials over the last 20 years has gone down by hundreds of percent! It appears that the once ideal philosophy of allowing jurors to resolve actions in controversy is now being accomplished by judges! What ever happened to the “originalist” judges and the justification for jury trials rather than forced settlements or dismissals?)
I wonder if Lexis has ever been sued for Libel based on a judicial opinion?
I know that judges are very frequently biased, and frequently decide cases based upon their own prejudices. Perhaps this judge was concerned with civil rights actions and wants to eliminate them by reducing legal fees?
When court decisions are left only to judges, we no longer have a rule of law!
Posted by Edwin Barmaidsky is my hero - 1 month, 3 weeks, 16 hours, 2 minutes ago

Judges are entitled to require that attorneys before their benches show enough respect for the court to at least proofread pleadings. Therefore, I don’t think the judge in this case was MEAN and I CONCUR with his decision.
Posted by Sendy - 1 month, 3 weeks, 15 hours, 49 minutes ago

Funny stuff!
Posted by Andy the Lawyer - 1 month, 3 weeks, 15 hours, 29 minutes ago

1. Once is arguably excusable. Twice is not.

2. Did this guy not konw that his word processing program has a spellcheck feature?

3. Ellen—I don’t know whether your practice involves court appearances—particularly in Federal court. But next time you’re there and you get an adverse ruling, feel free to tell the judge that she’s a “Meanie.“ Odds are we’ll read about it on this blog.
Posted by Adam Rhea - 1 month, 3 weeks, 15 hours, 23 minutes ago

To Bill AND Ellen B.: actually, I think you both mean ‘only the client can determine if HE OR SHE is satisfied’ as client is singular and they is plural. What’s happened to spelling and grammar in this country?
Posted by Oxnard Oasis - 1 month, 3 weeks, 15 hours, 16 minutes ago

Can you imagine what would happen if they only people we had to please were our clients? We’d have no sense of respectability at all. We certainly wouldn’t care about the truth - we’d only care about hurting the other side! I would never let my clients turn me into that kind of person.
Posted by Adam Rhea - 1 month, 3 weeks, 15 hours, 14 minutes ago

And to Irwin Ironstone: how is it possible jury trials have gone down by “hundreds of percent”? Does that mean we are actually experiencing a negative number of jury trials? (I assume that means people are actually going out and fixing problems in the world before claims can even arise?)
Posted by Edwin Barmaidsky - 1 month, 3 weeks, 15 hours, 7 minutes ago

Adam, go join Bill and Ellen in the corner. The correct indefinite third person pronoun, when referring to a person, is “he.“ “he or she” or “he/she” are used popularly, but due to awkwardness are not preferred. And those who take it personal when one uses “he” need to grow up. If you know WHO I mean.
Posted by Oh my gosh - 1 month, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

I am ashamed to say that I took the time to read the comments posted above. Don’t any of us have something better to do than criticize each other. Oh, by the way Irwin Ironstone, it is fairy tales not fairy tails.
Posted by Shakara Smithers - 1 month, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 42 minutes ago

I second #2.

Writing well is a critical function of the legal profession and if one cannot grasp at least the most minimally acceptable composition standards, improvement needs to occur or another career sought.
Posted by Richard Kirk - 1 month, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 7 minutes ago

I offer this reminder to those who have urged here that attorney Puricelli should have spell-checked his filings: A spell checker is a useful tool, but will only catch gross errors. A careful writer eyeballs one’s own product. In one of my cases, opposing counsel led off her responsive brief on appeal by stating that: “The trail court properly determined. . .“ It’s right there on page 1, the very first entry in her points and authorities, and she repeated it in the argument. That attorney also filed more than one memoranda with the “trail” court in the case, arguing that my client’s position was “merit less.“ For myself, I’m a one-man band, solo practitioner. So I don’t have a staff. But I do have some very useful dictionaries and style guides.
Posted by SheriR - 1 month, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 1 minute ago

From Support Staff to Ellen: Sorry, but you also misspelled “suport.“
Posted by Richard Kirk - 1 month, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 56 minutes ago

In my comment, no. 41 here, “more than one memoranda,“ should read, “more than one memorandum.“ Let me be the first to say, “D’oh!“
Posted by Mark Haesloop - 1 month, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 39 minutes ago

I was a student of linguistics long before I became a lawyer. Language, written or oral, is intended to convey meaning. Legal language is further intended to convince. Only if the “typos” prevent of distract from these purposes does it fail. However, I think the Judge’s action is minimally related to the “typos”. Mis-citation to the court is substantive and also a violation of the Code of Professional Conduct. We have all sent out a document of which we were not proud from time to time. Reading between the lines I think this Judge found this lawyer’s total performance less than professional and saw no reason to reward him. The judge’s actions were proper in that he did not take action against the client and he is in a much better position to evaluate the whole picture. God, I hope my spelling and grammar are correct.
Posted by R - 1 month, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 36 minutes ago

It is hard to believe how many times I have seen the word “public” misspelled in legal documents: with the letter “l” missing. The result is invariably embarrassing.

I suggest that unless we are medical malpractice lawyers, all of us take the time to set our auto-correct feature to substitute “public” for that other word.
Posted by Raleigh - 1 month, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 35 minutes ago

I feel for this guy about the wrong document uploading; using the CM/ECF system is daunting and difficult, and if you are not proficient with it, it would be an easy mistake, although they could (should) have downloaded and reviewed the filed copy and withdrawn it before consideration by the Judge.
Posted by Raleigh - 1 month, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 32 minutes ago

R - my chronic error, not caught by spell check is “doe snot” instead of “does not”; apparently snot is in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, so this gets missed by spell check.
Posted by Ouch! - 1 month, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 16 minutes ago

I think this story is a good reminder that the way we conduct ourselves affects our reputation. I would hate to be the lawyer cited in this article!
Posted by Associate - 1 month, 3 weeks, 12 hours, 49 minutes ago

Anyone who reads the full article instead of the headline might notice that the judge didn’t slash the fees by $154K for the typo.

Step 1: reduce $180k request to $105k to account for claims dismissed before trial.

Step 2: Cut 75% of what’s left for (a) illiterate pleadings, AND (b) claims rejected by the jury.

From the blog post, it’s hard to tell exactly how much money we’re talking about. Based on the linked article, it sounds like most of the reduction was to account for unsuccessful claims. But it’s much more interesting and sensational to suggest that a lawyer lost $154k because of some typos.

For those of you who say it’s up to the client, note that this is about how much the government should have to pay Puricelli, not how much his client should pay.

Before jumping to conclusions, try reading (1) the linked article, or (2) the judge’s order.
Posted by Lionel Hutz - 1 month, 3 weeks, 12 hours, 7 minutes ago

“That’s why hes the judge and I’m the…..the law talkin guy….“
Posted by ckconrad - 1 month, 3 weeks, 12 hours, 5 minutes ago

Typos and other errors in postings on this blog are understandable—we have only a small viewing window and, most likely, are posting on the fly. That said, Irwin I. (#26), I sure would like to see your “fairy tails”.
Posted by Allan - 1 month, 3 weeks, 11 hours, 40 minutes ago

I concur with the judge, and the majority of the bloggers. Writing, including spelling and grammar, are to the lawyer as tools, including hammers, plumb lines and levels, are to the carpenter.
Posted by Ronnie - 1 month, 3 weeks, 11 hours, 9 minutes ago

#49: You forgot (c) there were four defendants, only one successful, and the lawyer made no attempt to differentiate between work done for them.

Overall, I must say that this has been a very humorous part of my day today. Thanks for the chuckles guys and gals!
Posted by William E Mullin - 1 month, 3 weeks, 10 hours, 16 minutes ago

Reminds me of the time I agreed to speak to a professional group. A staffer sent me an email the day before the event(I swear I didn’t make this up}:“ Bill : We are canceling [the event] because of lack of interest. I apologize for any incontinence this may cause”
Heck, I was pretty upset, but….
Posted by Ellen's EX-Boyfriend - 1 month, 3 weeks, 9 hours, 17 minutes ago

I’m sure that some of you will be quite saddened to hear that Ellen and I have called it quits—actually I made the decision to split with her. The reason? Ellen spends all her time posting her absurd comments on this site and attributing ridiculous comments to me, rather than giving me some good loving.

I recently realized that I have finally had enough of HER, so if she keeps writing about things I’ve said or done, they are complete fabrication. Indeed, I have never spoken to her about my work. I know that, if I did, she would post it on this site. I do respect client and business confidentiality.

By the way, Ellen is not a lawyer, as I am sure many of you have figured out by now. In fact. she is not even a law student. She did attend law school a few years ago, but she dropped out after only a few weeks. Apparently, the reason she dropped out was because she is quasi-illerate. Her profs criticized her from the outset in relation to her strange, random and incomprehensible use of upper-case characters.

For the past few years, Ellen has worked as a photo-copy girl (I mean woman—sorry Ellen) at a small firm in the mid-west. She works part-time, usually afternoons, which is why she can stay up until the early morning hours waiting to be the first to post her comments on this site. All references to her firm, dealing with the managing partner, bonuses, living in New York, etc., are a figment of her vivid (almost schizophrenic) imagination.

In retrospect, I am amazed that I put up with her for as long as I did—172 days. Thankfully, our relationship is now at an end. Hopefully, since she no longer has any reason to write about the things I apparently think or supposedly say to her, her postings on this site will also now come to an end.
Posted by Ellen's EX-Boyfriend - 1 month, 3 weeks, 9 hours, 10 minutes ago

I meant to say “quasi-illiterate”
Posted by Caleb Boone - 1 month, 2 weeks, 6 days, 20 hours, 34 minutes ago

Fairy tails and doe snot. My goodness. I once trusted a secretary to submit a lengthy brief in my absence only to discover later, to my horror, she misspelled res judicata “race judy conna” many times, with ego-withering consistency. It is good to write well and spell correctly. When Ladybird Johnson passed away I saw a CNN caption which read: “Ladybird Johnson laying in state.“ Why not finish that? “Omelette to be served in Statuary Hall.“
Posted by Chauntel - 1 month, 2 weeks, 6 days, 5 hours, 1 minute ago

After such mistakes such as this, I think Mr. Puricelli should prepare for a future malpractice suit!
Posted by Eliyahu - 1 month, 2 weeks, 4 days, 14 hours, 48 minutes ago

As a paralegal working for an attorney who examines each outgoing document as if he were the editor of the Law Review, I would say that there’s really no excuse for submitted slipshod work or pleadings which are riddled with typos to a court. They distract from the message and tend to raise questions about the competence of the person submitting them. We regularly receive pleadings from several deputy prosecutors who have yet to discern the difference between “its” and “it’s” or between “they’re” and “their” when they write.

At least they aren’t as bad as the writing in the police reports with which I have to deal daily. The most constant aggravation is the incessant use of “myself”, as in “Myself and Officer Jones entered the residence…“
Posted by Jic - 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days, 13 hours, 38 minutes ago

If anyone wonders why people hate lawyers, just read these postings.
Posted by Legally Reese - 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days, 56 minutes ago

Pray tell, where should a young attorney turn to for help if they have passed the bar, yet has poor writing skills?
Posted by J - 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 day, 21 hours, 59 minutes ago

With $154,000, that lawyer could’ve hired a good legal secretary who could’ve read over his work. This guy has been sanctioned before for poor briefs. He doesn’t learn his lesson.

Commenting has expired on this post.

ABA Journal - Law News Now

Attorney Fees