Justia Legal Ethics Opinion Summaries
Articles Posted in Labor & Employment Law
Danos v. Jones, et al
Plaintiff was a secretary of G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. during his service as a district judge until Porteous was impeached and the Judicial Council of the Fifth Circuit suspended Porteous's authority to employ staff, which resulted in plaintiff's termination. Plaintiff sued the Judicial Council and fifteen of its members seeking declaratory relief, reinstatement to her position, monetary relief, and attorney's fees and costs. Plaintiff subsequently appealed the district court's order insofar as it dismissed her claims against the members of the Judicial Council. The court held that plaintiff lacked prudential standing to bring her constitutional challenge to the Judicial Council's action. The court rejected plaintiff's claim that the ultra vires exception applied to sovereign immunity where her claims for injunctive relief were moot in light of Porteous's removal from office; claims for back pay and retirement credits were barred by sovereign immunity; and plaintiff lacked the necessary injury-in-fact to pursue declaratory relief. The court also held that even if plaintiff had standing to seek declaratory relief, she had not pleaded a sufficient claim of ultra vires action by the Judicial Council to overcome the jurisdictional bar of sovereign immunity. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.
McClain, et al. v. Lufkin Industries Inc.
After multiple appeals to the court and extensive trial and other proceedings, plaintiffs' Title VII class action for employment discrimination against Lufkin Industries, Inc. (Lufkin) culminated in a favorable multimillion dollar judgment and injunctive relief. Both parties subsequently challenged the district court's attorneys' fee award and Lufkin's complaint that back pay damages were erroneously authorized in an earlier appeal. The court affirmed as to the back pay damages but vacated and remanded as to the attorneys' fees. In particular, given the unrebutted evidence in the record that it was necessary for plaintiffs to retain counsel from outside the Eastern District of Texas, the district court abused its discretion in failing to use the rate counsel charged in their home district as the starting point in the lodestar calculation.
Dreith, et al. v. Nu Image, Inc., et al.
Defendants engaged in discovery misconduct that was sufficiently egregious to cause the district court to enter an order of default against them. Although defendants subsequently challenged the default order as erroneous, defendants did not challenge the order of default by way of a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55(c) or 60(b). At issue was whether Judge Real, a district court judge, had the power to impose default as a sanction for discovery misconduct and assuming such power, whether Judge Real abused his discretion by imposing default rather than lesser sanctions. The court held that defendants' failures to comply with orders of the court provided Judge Real with the power under Rule 37(b) to impose sanctions sua sponte, up to and including default and that Judge Wilson appropriately revisited previous orders of the court when he replaced Judge Real after Judge Real recused himself. The court also held that the district court possessed the power to impose the sanction of default and that the district court did not abuse its discretion by doing so. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.
Mendez-Aponte v. Commonwealth of P.R.
The former (2001-2006) Assistant Secretary of State for Protocol Affairs at the Puerto Rico State Department sued the Secretary of State under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the official fired him due to his political affiliation. The district court dismissed, holding that plaintiff could be terminated without cause because he held a trust position for which party affiliation was an appropriate qualification, and fined plaintiff's attorneys $1000 each, concluding that the pleadings and responses that they submitted violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b). The First Circuit affirmed; plaintiff's position was not federally protected against political discrimination. The pleadings at issue consisted, in large part, of speculation and conclusory allegations lacking evidentiary support.
Scott v. City of New York
This dispute arose from the district court's decision to award an attorney $515,179.28 in attorney's fees pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act's fee shifting provision, 29 U.S.C. 216(b), for work performed in successfully litigating a case against the City of New York ("city"). The attorney did not keep contemporaneous records and the city appealed the award, arguing that it violated the New York State Ass'n for Retarded Children, Inc. v Carey rule, which explicitly required that such records be kept. The court held that, because a district court's "personal observation" of an attorney's work was not by itself a sufficient basis for permitting a deviation and awarding fees in the absence of contemporaneous records, the most recent order of the district court reinstating its original award of attorney's fees was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings.