O'Rourke v. Dominion Voting Systems ( 2022 )

Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 1
FILED
United States Court of Appeals
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT December 13, 2022
_________________________________
Christopher M. Wolpert
Clerk of Court
KEVIN O’ROURKE; NATHANIEL L.
CARTER; LORI CUTUNILLI; LARRY D.
COOK; ALVIN CRISWELL; KESHA
CRENSHAW; NEIL YARBROUGH;
AMIE TRAPP,
Plaintiffs,
v. No. 21-1442
(D.C. No. 1:20-CV-03747-NRN)
DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS, INC., (D. Colo.)
a Delaware corporation; FACEBOOK,
INC., a Delaware corporation; CENTER
FOR TECH AND CIVIC LIFE;
GRETCHEN WHITMER, individually;
JOCELYN BENSON, individually;
TOM WOLF, individually; KATHY
BOOCKVAR, individually,
Defendants - Appellees,
and
MARK E. ZUCKERBERG, individually;
PRISCILLA CHAN, individually; BRIAN
KEMP, individually; BRAD
RAFFENSPERGER, individually; TONY
EVERS, individually; ANN S. JACOBS;
MARK L. THOMSEN, individually;
MARGE BOSTELMAN, individually;
JULIE M. GLANCEY, individually;
DEAN KNUDSON, individually;
ROBERT F. SPINDELL, JR., individually;
DOES 1-10,000,
Defendants.
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GARY D. FIELDER; ERNEST J.
WALKER,
Attorneys - Appellants.
_________________________________
ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
_________________________________
Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, TYMKOVICH and ROSSMAN, Circuit Judges.
_________________________________
Gary D. Fielder and Ernest J. Walker, the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the
underlying action (“the Attorneys”), appeal from the district court’s order requiring
them to pay the defendants a total of $186,922.50 as sanctions under the court’s
inherent powers, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, and 28 U.S.C. § 1927.
Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm the award of sanctions
under the court’s inherent powers and § 1927.
BACKGROUND
The plaintiffs sought to pursue a civil-rights class action alleging that the
defendants violated the constitutional rights of every person registered to vote in the
November 2020 election for President of the United States. See O’Rourke v.
Dominion Voting Sys., Inc. (“O’Rourke I”), No. 21-1161, 2022 WL 1699425, at *1
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of
this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore
ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding
precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral
estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with
Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
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(10th Cir. May 27, 2022), cert. denied, -- U.S.L.W. --, 2022 WL 17408191 (U.S.
Dec. 5, 2022) (No. 22-305). They based their standing on their status as registered
voters. See id. For relief, they sought “a declaratory judgment, a permanent
injunction enjoining Defendants from continuing to burden the rights of Plaintiffs
and all similarly situated registered voters, and ‘nominal’ damages of $1,000 per
registered voter, totaling approximately $160 billion.” Id. (citations and internal
quotation marks omitted).
Among the defendants were Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. (“Dominion”),
Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta Platforms, Inc.) (“Facebook”), and the Center
for Tech and Civic Life (“CTCL”). These three defendants moved to dismiss on
various grounds, including that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they sought to
assert only non-justiciable, generalized grievances. The plaintiffs opposed the
motions to dismiss, but then moved for leave to file an amended complaint that
would add new plaintiffs and new claims, including claims under the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”). Dominion, Facebook, and
CTCL opposed the motion to amend.
Other defendants included the governors and secretaries of state of Michigan
and Pennsylvania, named in their individual capacities. These four defendants
moved to dismiss, alleging not only that the plaintiffs lacked standing but that the
District of Colorado lacked personal jurisdiction over them. And they opposed the
plaintiffs’ motion to amend, as they were named as defendants in the proposed
amended complaint. Before the district court decided the defendants’ various
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motions to dismiss, however, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims against
the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants.
The district court, a magistrate judge presiding by consent of the parties,
entertained argument on the motions to dismiss and the motion to amend. After
hearing from Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL, the district court pressed the
Attorneys on the question of their clients’ standing, specifically whether they could
show any particularized injury.
Ultimately, in light of the voluntary dismissal, the district court denied the
Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants’ motions to dismiss as moot. As to
Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL, the district court held that the plaintiffs failed to
demonstrate standing to pursue their claims because they had not plausibly pleaded
particularized injury, but instead sought to pursue only generalized grievances. It
further held that granting leave to amend would be futile because the proposed
amended complaint also failed to plausibly plead sufficient particularized injury to
overcome the generalized grievance doctrine. The district court thus granted the
defendants’ motions to dismiss, denied the plaintiffs’ motion to amend, and
dismissed the action for lack of Article III jurisdiction.
Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL then moved for an award of their attorney’s
fees under Rule 11, § 1927, and the court’s inherent powers, and the Michigan and
Pennsylvania defendants moved for an award of their attorney’s fees under § 1927
and the court’s inherent powers. After briefing and oral argument before the district
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court, the Attorneys moved for an evidentiary hearing. Noting that the motions
already had been submitted, the district court denied the request as untimely.
The district court granted all the defendants’ motions for sanctions and ordered
the Attorneys to pay the defendants’ fees incurred for preparing and arguing their
motions to dismiss and their oppositions to the plaintiffs’ motion to amend. The
district court subsequently denied the Attorneys’ Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
59(e) motion (except to correct a prior statement that the Michigan defendants had
sought sanctions under Rule 11). The sanctions awards totaled $186,922.50:
$62,930 to Dominion, $50,000 to Facebook, $62,930 to CTCL, $4,900 to the
Michigan defendants, and $6,162.50 to the Pennsylvania defendants.
In the meantime, the plaintiffs appealed from the dismissal of their action.
We affirmed the dismissal for lack of standing, holding that the district court
correctly applied the generalized grievance doctrine. See O’Rourke I, 2022 WL
1699425, at *2. We further upheld the denial of the motion to amend on grounds of
futility. See id. at *3. The Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs’ petition for a writ of
certiorari.
The Attorneys now appeal from the sanctions order.
DISCUSSION
We review a sanction award, whether under Rule 11, § 1927, or the court’s
inherent powers, for abuse of discretion. See Farmer v. Banco Popular of N. Am.,
791 F.3d 1246, 1256 (10th Cir. 2015). “A district court would necessarily abuse its
discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly
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erroneous assessment of the evidence.” Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S.
384, 405 (1990).
I. Propriety of Sanctions
A. Rule 11 Sanctions
The Attorneys note that the district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims
before Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL filed their motions for sanctions. In Roth v.
Green, 466 F.3d 1179, 1193 (10th Cir. 2006), we agreed with an appellant’s
contention “that the motions for [Rule 11] sanctions should have been denied because
they were not filed until after the district court had dismissed the complaint.” The
defendants offer various reasons why it nonetheless was proper to impose sanctions
under Rule 11, but we need not consider these issues further because we affirm the
sanctions awards under the court’s inherent powers and § 1927. Cf. Farmer,
791 F.3d at 1257 (declining to consider sanctions under § 1927 and instead focusing
on sanctions under the court’s inherent powers).
B. Inherent Powers Sanctions
1. Legal Standards
“Federal courts possess certain inherent powers, not conferred by rule or
statute, to manage their own affairs so as to achieve the orderly and expeditious
disposition of cases. That authority includes the ability to fashion an appropriate
sanction for conduct which abuses the judicial process.” Goodyear Tire & Rubber
Co. v. Haeger, 581 U.S. 101, ___, 137 S. Ct. 1178, 1186 (2017) (citation and internal
quotation marks omitted). “[A] court may assess attorney’s fees when a party has
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acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.” Chambers v.
NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45-46 (1991) (internal quotation marks omitted). But
“[b]ecause of their very potency, inherent powers must be exercised with restraint
and discretion.” Id. at 44.
2. Attorneys’ Challenges to Inherent-Powers Sanctions
The Attorneys make two arguments regarding sanctions under the court’s
inherent powers. First, they argue that the district court should not have imposed
inherent-powers sanctions because the defendants did not argue that their conduct fell
outside the scope of Rule 11 and § 1927. Second, they contend that the record does
not support the imposition of inherent-powers sanctions.
i. No Need to Rely on Rule 11 or § 1927
The Attorneys first argue that an inherent-powers sanction was inappropriate
because the defendants did not argue that the Attorneys committed wrongful conduct
that was outside the scope of Rule 11 or § 1927. We have observed, however, that
“Chambers does not require consideration of sanctions under the federal rules before
a court invokes its inherent powers.” Auto-Owners Ins. Co. v. Summit Park
Townhome Ass’n (“Auto-Owners I”), 886 F.3d 852, 858 (10th Cir. 2018).
Chambers states that when there is bad-faith conduct in the course of
litigation that could be adequately sanctioned under the Rules, the court
ordinarily should rely on the Rules rather than the inherent power. But
Chambers adds that a court may impose sanctions by means of the inherent
power even if the conduct could also be sanctioned under the Rules.
Id. at 857-58 (ellipses, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly,
we reject this argument.
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ii. The Evidence Satisfies the Chambers Standard
The Attorneys further argue that “no evidence exists in the record that
objectively demonstrates that [they] acted improperly, or unprofessional[ly]. In fact,
to the contrary, [they] have filed well-researched and thoroughly documented
complaints and other pleadings.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 47. Regardless of any other
issues involved in this case, however, we need not look beyond the issues of standing
and personal jurisdiction to conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion in
finding that the Attorneys acted “in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for
oppressive reasons,” as required by Chambers.
First, the district court found that “there was no good faith basis for believing
or asserting that Plaintiffs had standing to bring the claims that they did” because
“[t]here was no individual particularized harm alleged,” Aplt. App. Vol. 11 at 2616,
and “[n]o reasonable attorney would have believed Plaintiffs, as registered voters and
nothing more, had standing to bring this suit,” id. at 2617. This finding is amply
supported in the record.
As discussed in O’Rourke I, the plaintiffs did not articulate any cognizable
particularized injury that would establish standing. 2022 WL 1699425, at *2. And it
was evident from the beginning that the plaintiffs faced an uphill battle. As the
district court stated in its merits decision, there was “a veritable tsunami of decisions
finding no Article III standing in near identical cases to the instant suit.” Aplt. App.
Vol. 7 at 1552. Yet the Attorneys’ “efforts to distinguish between this case and the
other dismissed lawsuits were either self-contradictory (claiming that this suit is
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brought against private entities and not government entities) or nonsensical and
precluded by Supreme Court caselaw (suggestion that seeking money damages rather
than an injunction as a remedy makes Plaintiffs’ claimed injury sufficiently
particularized to form a basis for standing).” Id. Vol. 11 at 2616.
At the hearing on the motions to dismiss and the motions to amend, the district
court explicitly gave Mr. Fielder the opportunity to distinguish the many adverse
cases cited by the defendants, but he was not able to meaningfully do so. He also
was not able to meaningfully explain how the proposed amended complaint
established the plaintiffs’ standing. And when the district court asked him to identify
the plaintiffs’ “most supportive” case to establish standing, Aplt. App. Vol. 7
at 1701, he cited Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461 (1953), which involved whether a
private entity was engaged in state action, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
347 U.S. 483 (1954), which held that school segregation was unconstitutional, and
Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983), which held that a state could not
impose an earlier filing deadline for independent candidates. But those cases neither
address the requirements for standing nor establish that the plaintiffs in this case had
a particularized injury to support standing. He also relied on Uzuegbunam v.
Preczewski, 141 S. Ct. 792 (2021), which held that nominal damages satisfies the
redressability element of standing. Directly contradicting any assertion that
Uzuegbunam addressed injury, however, the Court stated, “[o]ur holding concerns
only redressability. It remains for the plaintiff to establish the other elements of
standing (such as a particularized injury) . . . .” Id. at 802 (emphasis added).
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In short, Plaintiffs’ arguments regarding standing were so inadequate that it
was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to conclude that the claims were
made in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons, such as to
support inherent-powers sanctions. Cf. Collins v. Daniels, 916 F.3d 1302, 1321
(10th Cir. 2019) (upholding Rule 11 sanctions where “Plaintiffs’ standing arguments
ignored controlling precedent” and “Plaintiffs unreasonably attempted to distinguish”
binding authorities regarding standing).
Second, the district court found that there was no good-faith basis for asserting
personal jurisdiction over the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants in the District
of Colorado. This finding too is more than amply supported. The Attorneys concede
that they dismissed their claims against these defendants because “there was,
admittedly, an issue over the Plaintiffs’ ability to establish personal jurisdiction.”
Aplt. Opening Br. at 43. They admitted before the district court that they researched
personal jurisdiction only after receiving the motions to dismiss, at which point they
determined they “could not feel with certainty that [they] could establish personal
jurisdiction.” Aplt. App. Vol. 11 at 2500. And when questioned by the district court,
they could not identify a single case supporting the proposition that a federal court
sitting in State A has personal jurisdiction over an official of State B regarding
actions taken by that official with regard to elections within State B.
The Attorneys contended that the defendants could have consented to personal
jurisdiction in the Colorado district court. But as the district court stated, “[I]t is
inconceivable to have ever thought that state officials of Pennsylvania or Michigan
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would voluntarily waive personal jurisdiction and come to a Colorado federal court
to answer charges about acts taken during the administration of Pennsylvania or
Michigan elections.” Id. at 2588.1 Moreover, if the plaintiffs’ sole hope was that the
defendants would waive personal jurisdiction, the Attorneys could have inquired of
the defendants—before filing this lawsuit—whether there was any possibility of such
a waiver. The answer “no” would have saved both the parties and the district court
the time and expense devoted to the plaintiffs’ claims against the Michigan and
Pennsylvania defendants.
For these reasons, we affirm the imposition of sanctions under the court’s
inherent powers.
C. Section 1927 Sanctions
1. Legal Standards
Under § 1927, “[a]ny attorney . . . who so multiplies the proceedings in any
case unreasonably and vexatiously may be required by the court to satisfy personally
the excess costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees reasonably incurred because of such
conduct.” 28 U.S.C. § 1927. Section 1927 focuses on whether an attorney’s conduct
“imposes unreasonable and unwarranted burdens on the court and opposing parties.”
Braley v. Campbell, 832 F.2d 1504, 1510 (10th Cir. 1987) (en banc). “An attorney
1
The Attorneys object to the district court’s use of the term “state officials”
because the plaintiffs sued the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants in their
individual capacities rather than their official capacities. This objection is meritless.
Given that the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants were state officials, the term is
accurate, no matter in what capacity the plaintiffs sued them.
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becomes subject to § 1927 sanctions by acting recklessly or with indifference to the
law, as well as by acting in the teeth of what he knows to be the law.” Id. at 1511
(internal quotation marks omitted). Because § 1927 applies only to the multiplication
of proceedings, however, it does not extend to the initiation of proceedings (i.e.,
filing a complaint). See Steinert v. Winn Grp., Inc., 440 F.3d 1214, 1224-25
(10th Cir. 2006).
An attorney’s subjective motivations are irrelevant; “any conduct that, viewed
objectively, manifests either intentional or reckless disregard of the attorney’s duties
to the court is sanctionable.” Baca v. Berry, 806 F.3d 1262, 1268 (10th Cir. 2015)
(brackets and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hamilton v. Boise Cascade
Exp., 519 F.3d 1197, 1203 (10th Cir. 2008) (“Where, ‘pure heart’ notwithstanding, an
attorney’s momentarily ‘empty head’ results in an objectively vexatious and
unreasonable multiplication of proceedings at expense to his opponent, the court may
hold the attorney personally responsible.”). An attorney is expected to exercise
judgment, see Hamilton, 519 F.3d at 1202; Braley, 832 F.2d at 1512, and must
“regularly re-evaluate the merits” of claims and “avoid prolonging meritless claims,”
Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1224. Accordingly, “[c]ontinuing to pursue claims after a
reasonable attorney would realize they lacked merit can warrant sanctions under
§ 1927.” Frey v. Town of Jackson, 41 F.4th 1223, 1245 (10th Cir. 2022); see also
Baca, 806 F.3d at 1278 (“[I]n a meritless case, protracted failure to do anything but
dismiss the case . . . might be sanctionable.”).
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2. Attorneys’ Challenges to § 1927 Sanctions
The Attorneys make two arguments regarding the § 1927 sanctions. First, they
assert that Michigan and Pennsylvania lack standing to seek sanctions because they
sued the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants in their individual capacities, not in
their official capacities. Second, they deny that they unreasonably and vexatiously
multiplied the proceedings.
i. There is No Lack of Standing
The Attorneys assert that the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants
improperly appeared in their official capacities, rather than in the individual
capacities in which they were named in the suit. As best we can tell, they thus
contend that Michigan and Pennsylvania lacked standing to seek sanctions under
§ 1927 because their officials were not named in their official capacities, and
therefore the states themselves were not parties to the suit.
We see no merit to this argument. The Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants
were the ones who sought and obtained sanctions. Although the awards were payable
due to the work of the respective states’ offices of the attorneys general, the
Attorneys have failed to demonstrate any lack of standing by the defendants to seek
sanctions. Notably, the principal ground for awarding § 1927 sanctions to these
defendants—the continued failure to acknowledge lack of personal jurisdiction—
applied whether the defendants were sued in their official capacities or their
individual capacities.
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ii. The Attorneys Multiplied the Proceedings
The Attorneys next argue that they did not “unreasonably and vexatiously”
multiply the proceedings. The district court based its award of § 1927 sanctions on
the “filing of a motion for leave to amend, without addressing the obvious fatal
problems with standing and lack of personal jurisdiction, while attempting to add
RICO claims based on a TIME magazine article that provided no support for such
claims.” Aplt. App. Vol. 11 at 2631-32.
Regarding the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants, personal jurisdiction
was an obvious issue. These defendants’ motions to dismiss highlighted the problem.
And by the time the Attorneys filed the motion to amend, they were aware that these
defendants were not going to consent to personal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, without
addressing personal jurisdiction, the Attorneys moved to file a proposed amended
complaint that continued to name these defendants.2 Given the plaintiffs’ inability to
establish personal jurisdiction over the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants, it was
not an abuse of discretion for the district court to conclude that the Attorneys
unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied the proceedings by failing to dismiss the
claims against them before filing the motion to amend and by naming them in the
proposed amended complaint. See Frey, 41 F.4th at 1245 (“Continuing to pursue
claims after a reasonable attorney would realize they lacked merit can warrant
sanctions under § 1927.”); Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1224 (recognizing an attorney must
2
The proposed amended complaint also named as additional defendants the
attorneys general of Michigan and Pennsylvania, in their official capacities.
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“regularly re-evaluate the merits of their claims and . . . avoid prolonging meritless
claims”).
As for Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL, they all raised the issue of plaintiffs’
standing at an early juncture. For substantially the same reasons discussed above in
connection with the inherent-powers sanctions, it was not an abuse of discretion for
the district court to conclude that the Attorneys unreasonably and vexatiously
multiplied the proceedings by moving to amend their complaint, including adding
RICO claims, without showing that the plaintiffs had standing to bring their claims.
See Frey, 41 F.4th at 1245; Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1224.
For these reasons, we affirm the imposition of sanctions under § 1927.
II. Constitutional Challenges
The Attorneys further argue that the sanctions violate their First Amendment
rights to speak and petition the government for redress of grievances and their Fifth
Amendment right to due process.
A. The Sanctions Did Not Violate the First Amendment
Although “[t]he right of access to the courts is an aspect of the First
Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” “the First
Amendment interests involved in private litigation are not advanced when the
litigation is based on knowingly frivolous claims.” Collins, 916 F.3d at 1323
(alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). We have recognized that “the
right to petition is not an absolute protection from liability,” United States v. Ambort,
405 F.3d 1109, 1117 (10th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted), and “the
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First Amendment is in no way a defense to Rule 11 violations,” King v. Fleming,
899 F.3d 1140, 1151 n.17 (10th Cir. 2018). In the circumstances of this case, where
the plaintiffs’ arguments regarding standing and personal jurisdiction were utterly
baseless, the Attorneys have failed to establish that the district court’s sanctions
violated their First Amendment rights.
B. The Sanctions Did Not Violate Due Process
The Attorneys complain that both the district court’s merits and sanctions
orders were “peppered with disdainful comments toward [the Attorneys] and the
Plaintiffs.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 50. But “judicial remarks during the course of a
trial that are critical or disapproving of, or even hostile to, counsel, the parties, or
their cases, ordinarily do not support a bias or partiality challenge,” Liteky v. United
States, 510 U.S. 540, 555 (1994), and to the extent the Attorneys intended to assert a
due-process violation from impermissible bias or prejudice, they have not shown that
the district court’s remarks went beyond the ordinary case.
The Attorneys further complain that the district court denied their
post-argument request for an evidentiary hearing. While acknowledging that notice
and an opportunity to respond generally satisfies due process in the sanctions context,
see, e.g., Braley, 832 F.2d at 1514, they assert that in this case, due process also
required an evidentiary hearing. We disagree.
“The precise procedural protections of due process vary, depending upon the
circumstances, because due process is a flexible concept unrestricted by any
bright-line rules.” Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1222. It has long been accepted, however,
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that “the sanction inquiry may properly be limited to the record in most instances.”
Braley, 832 F.2d at 1515; see also Collins, 916 F.3d at 1320 n.15 (rejecting argument
“that the Rule 11 hearing was deficient because Plaintiffs should have been allowed
to produce evidence”); White v. Gen. Motors Corp., 908 F.2d 675, 686 (10th Cir.
1990) (“[A]n opportunity to be heard does not require an oral or evidentiary hearing
on the issue. The opportunity to fully brief the issue is sufficient to satisfy due
process requirements.”). Relatively recently, we upheld a sanctions award exceeding
$100,000 that was imposed without any type of hearing. See Auto-Owners Ins. Co. v.
Summit Park Townhome Ass’n (“Auto-Owners II”), 886 F.3d 863, 873 (10th Cir.
2018) (stating that attorneys’ receipt of application for fees and opportunity to
respond satisfied due process). The Attorneys have not shown that this case falls
outside the general rule, particularly when their request for an evidentiary hearing
was untimely.
III. Amount of Sanctions
Finally, the Attorneys attack the amounts of the sanctions awards. They
concede that the awards in favor of the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants were
reasonable, but they contend that those in favor of Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL
were not. The Attorneys recognize that the district court properly employed the
lodestar method. Further, they accept the defendants’ representations as to the hours
expended and the reasonableness of the hourly rates. They simply believe that
“requiring [them] to pay over $180,000 in attorney fees is excessive and
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unreasonable.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 48. Citing critical remarks by the district court,
they also indicate that the awards amounted to an impermissible punitive sanction.
When a court orders an award of the other side’s attorneys’ fees under its
inherent powers, “such an order is limited to the fees the innocent party incurred
solely because of the misconduct.” Goodyear, 137 S. Ct. at 1184. And we keep in
mind that § 1927’s purpose is “to compensate victims of abusive litigation practices,
not to deter and punish offenders.” Hamilton, 519 F.3d at 1205. The Attorneys,
however, fail to convince us that the district court awarded punitive sanctions, rather
than compensatory sanctions. Although the district court made statements that could
be interpreted as an intent to deter this kind of lawsuit, there is no dispute that the
amounts it ultimately awarded were calculated according to the attorneys’ fees
actually incurred (and, indeed, discounted from there—the district court did not
award the full amounts some of the defendants claimed).
Moreover, the Attorneys fail to convince us that the award was excessive and
unreasonable. “In applying the abuse-of-discretion standard, we consider whether
the district court’s determination appears reasonable in light of the complexity of the
case, the number of strategies pursued, and the responses necessitated by the other
party’s maneuvering.” Auto-Owners II, 886 F.3d at 873. The case was complex,
with the plaintiffs initially pursuing a number of constitutional claims and then
moving to add additional claims, including RICO allegations. They also sought to
represent a nationwide class of registered voters. And although the disposition
ultimately turned on the plaintiffs’ standing and whether they could overcome the
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generalized grievance doctrine, the defendants also had to address other issues—for
example, whether they, as non-governmental entities, could be sued under § 1983,
and in Facebook’s case, the potential effect of Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act. Moreover, the plaintiffs set extraordinarily high monetary stakes,
requesting “nominal” damages amounting to $160 billion.
For these reasons, the sanctions awards were not an abuse of discretion.
CONCLUSION
We affirm the district court’s sanctions order.
Entered for the Court
Per Curiam
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