Pfister v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.
| Decision Date | 17 September 1980 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. C78-1567A. |
| Citation | 496 F. Supp. 932 |
| Parties | Frederick B. PFISTER, Plaintiff, v. DELTA AIR LINES, INC. et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia |
Eugene J. Carella, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff.
Hugh E. Wright, Hansell, Post, Brandon & Dorsey, Eugene G. Partain, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, Atlanta, Ga., for defendants.
The conduct of plaintiff's counsel, Eugene J. Carella, in this case is the most outrageous and unprofessional conduct on the part of an attorney that this Court has ever encountered. The litigation tactics of Mr. Carella cannot be countenanced by a judicial system which depends upon the good faith and integrity of attorneys who are admitted to practice and who accept solemn responsibilities as officers of the court. He has vexatiously multiplied the proceedings in this case and litigated in bad faith. To hold Mr. Carella personally responsible for the costs, including attorneys' fees, in the amount of $17,555.11, necessarily incurred by the defendants in responding to Mr. Carella's harassment, is but a mild sanction. Were Mr. Carella a member of this Court's Bar, further disciplinary proceedings would certainly be warranted.
Mr. Carella filed the complaint on behalf of the plaintiff on October 26, 1976, and Delta1 moved for a change of venue on December 20, 1976. After securing two extensions of time, Mr. Carella filed a response to the motion for change of venue in late February, 1977. A hearing was held before Judge Joseph Waddy of the United States District Court of the District of Columbia on March 21, 1977. Ten days later, Judge Waddy issued an order granting the change of venue and transferring the case to the Northern District of Georgia.
Mr. Carella then filed an avalanche of motions and appeals, all of which delayed the transfer of the case for one year and five months. He first moved the District Court for an order certifying an appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). That motion was denied within thirteen days. He then filed a notice of appeal from the order denying certification and soon thereafter moved for an extension of time to transmit the record to the Court of Appeals.
He also petitioned the Court of Appeals for Writ of Mandamus or Prohibition to nullify the March 31, 1977 order of Judge Waddy. That motion was denied on August 2, 1977, and two weeks later he moved for a stay of the transfer and of all proceedings and also requested a rehearing en banc on the motion for mandamus or prohibition. On September 20, 1977, the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal. At that time, Mr. Carella had not yet filed his opening brief.
On September 24, 1977, and again on October 27, 1977, Mr. Carella moved for a stay of the mandate pending the filing of his petition for certiorari. The Court of Appeals granted that motion to and including December 15, 1977. Two days before the deadline, he filed another motion for a stay of the mandate pending his petition for certiorari. Mr. Carella also filed several other motions with the Court of Appeals, which finally granted a stay to and including January 30, 1978, and ordered that no further stays would be granted.
On January 30, 1978, he finally filed a petition for certiorari, which was docketed as No. 77-1068 and named Judge Waddy as a Respondent.
The Supreme Court promptly denied certiorari, whereupon he requested a stay of the order denying certiorari, which was denied by Mr. Chief Justice Burger. Mr. Carella then reapplied to suspend the effect of the order denying certiorari, which was promptly denied by Mr. Justice Brennan. Finally, on May 17, 1978, he petitioned for rehearing on his petition for certiorari. Less than one month later, on June 12, the petition for rehearing was denied.
On September 13, 1978, the Clerk of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia transferred the case to the Clerk of the Northern District of Georgia.
Shortly after the case was finally transferred, Delta moved to strike and/or dismiss various counts of the complaint. In an order filed December 21, 1978, Judge Edenfield left Count I of the complaint virtually intact, but he dismissed Counts II, III and IV. He also directed Mr. Carella to file a supplemental brief within twenty days with respect to Counts V through VIII of the complaint.
Mr. Carella then filed a motion for reconsideration of that order, as well as a memorandum of points and authorities in response to the direction of the Court. While his motion for reconsideration was pending, on January 18, 1979, Mr. Carella filed a notice of appeal from the order filed on December 21, 1978. He then secured two extensions of time for transmission of the record in his first appeal to the Fifth Circuit, which was docketed as No. 79-1763.
On July 2, 1979, Judge Edenfield dismissed Counts V through VIII, and Mr. Carella noticed a second appeal on July 30, 1979, which appeal was docketed as No. 79-3207.
Three days later, on August 2, 1979, Mr. Carella filed a motion to disqualify Judge Edenfield. In that motion, he alleged that the District Judge is "consciously and intentionally abusing his office . . . under the ruse of legal exegesis", that his conduct is "grossly aberrant", "that his decision-making is motivated by extra-judicial directives and pressures more customarily referred to as political favors", that he is "beholden" to certain of the defendants' counsel, that he "issued a ruling of frivolous authority and amateurishly conceived", that he is "acting as a political pawn", that he has "knowingly and consciously, as well as willfully and wantoningly sic, maliciously abused his office", that he is "deliberately protracting this cause in order to cause the plaintiff maximum harm and detriment", and so on.
In the first appeal taken to the Fifth Circuit (No. 79-1763), Mr. Carella failed to file his opening brief within the time limitations, and the defendants moved to dismiss the appeal on April 20, 1979. That motion was granted on July 3, 1979, after Mr. Carella failed to file any response to the motion. He then filed an application to recall and stay the mandate and for an extension of time to file his petition for rehearing. Delta first learned of this motion when it received a copy of an order filed on August 9, 1979, which granted the motion. Mr. Carella then filed a petition for rehearing and suggestion for hearing en banc, but that was denied on October 1, 1979.
On October 6, 1979, Mr. Carella filed a motion for a stay in No. 79-1763 and to consolidate that appeal with the appeal in No. 79-3207.
Delta then moved to dismiss the appeal in No. 79-3207, and it also moved the Court to hold Mr. Carella personally responsible for the costs, including attorneys' fees, of that appeal. Delta asserted that the appeal had been taken in bad faith for the purpose of delay and harassment and that attorneys' fees could therefore be taxed as part of the costs. Furthermore, Delta argued that the Court could hold Mr. Carella personally responsible for all those costs, including attorneys' fees, under 28 U.S.C. § 1927. On the ground that the motion for stay and consolidation filed in No. 79-1763 was frivolous, dilatory and filed in bad faith, Delta also moved to hold counsel personally responsible for the costs generated by that motion.
Mr. Carella then responded with a flood of motions in both appeals. He moved to stay all the proceedings, to disqualify legal counsel, to impose sanctions upon opposing counsel, and for leave to file an amended complaint in the Fifth Circuit. Due to the delayed receipt of all of these motions, Delta was unable to respond until November 5. All of its responses were returned unfiled, but nevertheless the Court denied all of Pfister's motions on November 13. In the meantime, the Court had already denied the motion for stay of the mandate in No. 79-1763 and granted Delta's motion to dismiss the appeal in No. 79-3207. As part of that order, the Court remanded Delta's motion to hold Mr. Carella personally responsible for the costs, including attorneys' fees, of the appeal taken in No. 79-3207. That order was filed on November 5, 1979. On or about November 21, 1979, Mr. Carella filed a motion seeking the recusal of the Fifth Circuit panel and the vacation of the orders of November 13 and November 5. He also filed a petition for rehearing with then—Chief Judge Brown on November 21, 1979. Delta did not receive a service copy of either of those motions.
On December 5, 1979, the Court of Appeals denied the motion for recusal and vacation of prior orders. It also denied the petition for rehearing, which Chief Judge Brown had referred to the panel which entered the prior orders. In addition, the Court ordered Mr. Carella, before seeking to practice further before the Court, to obtain admission to its bar as required by Local Rule 5. The clerk was directed to accept no further filings from Mr. Carella until such time as he obtained admission to the Bar of the Court.
In an order filed on February 27, 1980, Chief Judge James P. Coleman dismissed judicial misconduct complaints filed by Mr. Carella against Judges Gee, Henderson, Hatchett, and Brown of the Fifth Circuit.
When several new district judges were appointed to the bench in the Northern District of Georgia, the judges of that Court transferred some of their cases to the newly-appointed judges in order to effect an equitable distribution of the workload. This case was one of those transferred by Judge Edenfield. Accordingly, in an order filed December 19, 1979, Judge Edenfield denied Pfister's motion for disqualification as moot. On January 18, 1980, Mr. Carella filed a notice of appeal from that order. Rather than...
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