Pavelic Flore v. Marvel Entertainment Group
| Decision Date | 05 December 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-791,88-791 |
| Citation | 107 L.Ed.2d 438,493 U.S. 120,110 S.Ct. 456 |
| Parties | PAVELIC & LeFLORE, Petitioner v. MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT GROUP et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 provides in pertinent part that pleadings and other papers shall be signed by at least one attorney of record in the attorney's individual name, which signature shall certify that he or she has read the paper and believes it to be well grounded in fact and law; and that, "[i]f a . . . paper is signed in violation of this rule, the court . . . shall impose upon the person who signed it, a represented party, or both, an appropriate sanction." In the present case, the District Court imposed a Rule 11 monetary sanction against the law firm of the signing attorney, rejecting the firm's contention that it could be imposed only against the individual signer. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: When read in the context of all of Rule 11's signature provisions, the phrase "person who signed" connotes the individual signer mentioned at the outset of the Rule and authorizes a court to impose a sanction only against that individual. That is so even when the individual explicitly signs on behalf of the firm, since it is only the signature "in the attorney's individual name " which complies with the Rule's requirement and to which the latter portions of the Rule attach consequences. Pp. 123-127.
854 F.2d 1452 (CA 2 1988), reversed in part and remanded.
Jacob Laufer, New York City, for petitioner.
Norman B. Arnoff, New York City, for respondents.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 provides in part: "If a pleading, motion, or other paper is signed in violation of this rule, the court . . . shall impose upon the person who signed it . . . an appropriate sanction. . . ." In this case we must determine whether Rule 11 authorizes a court to impose a sanction not only against the individual attorney who signed, but also against that attorney's law firm.
The action giving rise to the current controversy was instituted by plaintiff Northern J. Calloway against respondents for willful copyright infringement of his motion picture script and other related claims. The original complaint—signed and filed by Calloway's attorney, Ray L. LeFlore—alleged that Calloway had developed an idea for a motion picture and written a script, and that respondents had begun to develop this work without his permission. Respondents filed a motion to dismiss, pointing to a series of documents annexed to the complaint that gave them the right to develop the work commercially. The District Court dismissed the complaint (with leave to refile), not on the ground that the documents authorized the alleged infringement, but because Calloway's complaint had failed to specify the registration number of his copyright and the dates upon which the alleged acts of infringement had occurred.
An amended complaint, again signed by LeFlore, was filed several weeks later. In addition to remedying the defects that were the basis of dismissal, it newly asserted that Calloway's signatures on the documents purporting to grant an option had been forged by respondents, and included that among the actions for which damages were sought. Plaintiff relied on this forgery claim in opposing respondents' motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment.
In October 1984, LeFlore joined with Radovan Pavelic to form the law partnership of Pavelic & LeFlore. Thereafter, all court papers in the case were signed:
Several of these papers, including interrogatory responses and a proposed pretrial order, continued to rely upon the allegation of forgery. At trial, the District Court found insufficient evidence to support that contention, and directed a verdict in favor of respondents on that issue. The jury returned a verdict against plaintiff on all remaining claims.
Upon respondents' motion and after a hearing, the District Court imposed a Rule 11 sanction in the amount of $100,000 against Pavelic & LeFlore on the ground that the forgery claim had no basis in fact and had not been investigated sufficiently by counsel. Radovan Pavelic moved to relieve the firm of the sanction, contending that (1) the firm did not exist during a major portion of the litigation and therefore was not fully responsible for the Rule 11 violations, and (2) Rule 11 empowers the court to impose a sanction only upon the attorney who signed the paper, not upon that attorney's law firm. The District Court accepted the first contention, and therefore amended its order to shift half of the sanction from the firm to LeFlore. It rejected the second contention, however, concluding that Rule 11 sanctions may be imposed "on both the individual attorney and the law firm on whose behalf he signed the papers." Calloway v. Marvel Entertainment Group, Div. of Cadence Industries Corp., 650 F.Supp. 684, 687 (SDNY 1986).
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed, 854 F.2d 1452, 1479 (1988), thus placing itself in square disagreement with an earlier holding of the Fifth Circuit that Rule 11 authorizes sanctions against no attorney other than the individual lawyer or lawyers who sign court papers, see Robin- son v. National Cash Register Co., 808 F.2d 1119, 1128-1130 (1987). We granted certiorari, 489 U.S. 1009, 109 S.Ct. 1116, 103 L.Ed.2d 179 (1989).
We give the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure their plain meaning, Walker v. Armco Steel Corp., 446 U.S. 740, 750, n. 9, 100 S.Ct. 1978, 1985 n. 9, 64 L.Ed.2d 659 (1980), and generally with them as with a statute, "[w]hen we find the terms . . . unambiguous, judicial inquiry is complete," Rubin v. United States, 449 U.S. 424, 430, 101 S.Ct. 698, 701, 66 L.Ed.2d 633 (1981). The specific text of Rule 11 at issue here is the provision that requires a court, when a paper is signed in violation of the Rule, to "impose upon the person who signed it . . . an appropriate sanction." Thus viewed in isolation, the phrase "person who signed" is ambiguous as to the point before us today. That is not so, however, when it is read in the total context of all the provisions of Rule 11 dealing with the signing of filings. Those provisions (all of Rule 11 except two sentences) are as follows:
In other contexts the phrase "the person who signed it" might bear the somewhat technical legal meaning of the natural or juridical person in whose name or on whose behalf the paper was signed; but in a paragraph beginning with a requirement of individual signature, and then proceeding to discuss the import and consequences of signature, we think references to the signer in the later portions must reasonably be thought to connote the individual signer mentioned at the outset. It is as strange to think that the phrase "person who signed" in the last sentence refers to the partnership represented by the signing attorney, as it would be to think that the earlier phrase "the signer has read the pleading" refers to a reading not necessarily by the individual signer but by someone in the partnership; or that the earlier phrase "[i]f a pleading . . . is not signed" refers not to an absence of individual signature but to an absence of signature on behalf of the partnership. Just as the requirement of signature is imposed upon the individual, we think the recited import and consequences of signature run as to him.
Respondents' interpretation is particularly hard to square with the text since they do not assert that "the person who signed," and who "shall" be sanctioned under the Rule, is only the partnership (that would obviously be unacceptable), but rather is either the partnership or the individual attorney, or both, at the court's option. But leaving that option unexpressed seems quite inconsistent with the extreme care with which the Rule, in the very same sentence, makes clear that the mandatory sanction must extend to "the person who signed [the paper], a represented party, or both." It is surely puzzling why the text would be so precise about that but leave to speculation whether only the individual attorney or his firm or both can be sanctioned. The puzzlement does not...
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