Rule 9011

Exaggerated Allegations Lead to Sanctions in Stay Violation Case

11/07/21

Many consumer debtor attorneys have chosen to enhance their revenue by filing suit on relatively minor violations of the automatic stay or discharge. There is nothing inherently wrong with these suits since they vindicate the rights that debtors receive when they file bankruptcy. However, some practitioners have resorted to filing form complaints which go on for hundreds of paragraphs with boilerplate allegations about the callousness of the particular creditor.

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Sanctions in the Michigan Election Case and in Bankruptcy Court (Pt. 2)

09/16/21

Yesterday I introduced King v. Whitmer (E.D. Mich. 8/25/21), the case in which Judge Linda Parker wrote a 110-page opinion awarding sanctions under three separate legal grounds. Today we look at sanctions under Fed.R.Civ.P. 11, the longest section of the opinion, as well as a case where sanctions were assessed under Fed.R.Bankr.P. 9011, its bankruptcy counterpart.

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Texas Lawyer Escapes Sanction

05/26/20
In politics, it is sometimes said, what did the president know and when did he know it. As it turns out this analysis is helpful in determining whether a lawyer should face sanctions under Rule 9011 as well. In the case of In re Dernick, No. 18-32417 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. 5/22/20), the fact that "there [we]re a fair number of complex and confusing details at play" was enough to prevent the motion in question from being objectively frivolous.
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Not a Good Idea to Object to Every Claim

04/10/11
You know that nothing good can come from an opinion which begins like this:
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