Sartin v. Pa

• Decision Date: 23 June 2014
• Docket Number: No. 13–1265.,13–1265.
• Citation: 756 F.3d 259
• Parties: Paul A. SARTIN, Independent Executor of the Estate of Peter A.T. Sartin, Plaintiff–Appellant, and Peter A.T. Sartin, Plaintiff, v. McNAIR LAW FIRM PA, Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

756 F.3d 259

Paul A. SARTIN, Independent Executor of the Estate of Peter A.T. Sartin, Plaintiff–Appellant,andPeter A.T. Sartin, Plaintiff,

v.McNAIR LAW FIRM PA, Defendant–Appellee.

No. 13–1265.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: May 13, 2014.

Decided: June 23, 2014.

ARGUED:Ronald L. Richter, Jr., Bland Richter, LLP, Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellant. Robert E. Stepp, Sowell Gray Stepp & Laffitte, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF:Eric S. Bland, Bland Richter, LLP, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. William H. Jordan, Sowell Gray Stepp & Laffitte, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee.

Before NIEMEYER, GREGORY, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge NIEMEYER wrote the opinion, in which Judge GREGORY and Judge FLOYD joined.

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

In a complex procedural context, we are called to construe the proper scope of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a), which authorizes district courts to correct mistakes found in judgments and orders.

Employing that Rule, the South Carolina District Court revisited two sanctions orders it had entered against “the Plaintiffs” in a private civil action more than a year earlier, indicating that it had originally intended the sanctions to apply to the plaintiffs' attorney, Peter A.T. Sartin, individually. Accordingly, it entered a Rule 60(a) clarifying order dated December 4, 2009, imposing the sanctions on Sartin. Sartin hired McNair Law Firm PA (“the McNair Firm”) to represent him in South Carolina and to appeal the district court's clarifying order, but the McNair Firm filed the notice of appeal two days late. The appeal was thereafter voluntarily abandoned.

Sartin commenced this malpractice action against the McNair Firm based on the late filing, and the district court (through a district judge different from the one who presided over the earlier action) granted the Firm's motion for summary judgment. The court concluded that Sartin suffered no injury because of the late notice of appeal, inasmuch as the district court in the earlier action properly employed Rule 60(a) to clarify its sanctions orders and, therefore, Sartin would not have succeeded on his appeal of that order, even had the notice of appeal been timely filed.

We agree and accordingly affirm.

I

In August 2006, California attorney Peter Sartin filed a complaint in the District of South Carolina on behalf of Travelers Insurance Company, as subrogee of Commercial Metals Company (“CMC”), and CMC, for its uninsured losses, against Tamini Transformatori, SRL, and Southwest Electric Company, demanding $17.7 million in damages arising from the failure of a transformer in a CMC facility in South Carolina. During the course of that litigation, Sartin noticed depositions for 14 Tamini witnesses in Milan, Italy. After deposing two, however, Sartin unilaterally cancelled the remainder and left Milan.

Claiming that Sartin's actions during the course of the two depositions and his abandonment of the remainder amounted to abusive and sanctionable conduct, Tamini filed a motion requesting that the court impose sanctions against “the Plaintiffs,” pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26(c) and 37(a). At the conclusion of the hearing on the motion, the court sharply rebuked Sartin for his behavior:

I thought the conduct of Mr. Sartin was totally inappropriate. And it was an egregious violation of any type of discovery and I do feel that sanctions are appropriate with regard to that.

* * *

And with regard to improperly limiting or terminating depositions, I find that that is a serious, serious issue. And after reviewing the video depositions that were provided to the court and reviewing those, those were very, very disturbing to me, because they appear to be one of the most blatant cases of abuse of depositions I have ever seen, and that kind of behavior will not be tolerated in this district.

I don't know what they do in Mr. Sartin's district, but we don't do that out here. You do not instruct witnesses how to answer questions, you do not coach witnesses, you do not arbitrarily just get up and leave a deposition. That is totally inappropriate and I think deserving of sanctions.

In the written order granting sanctions, dated October 17, 2007, the court stated that it found “sanctions to be appropriate with respect to what it consider[ed] to be egregious discovery abuse by Plaintiffs.” In addition to imposing orders limiting plaintiffs' discovery, the court ordered “Plaintiffs” to pay Tamini's “costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees,” in amounts to be determined after further submissions.

Following the issuance of the October 17, 2007 sanctions order, Travelers and CMC retained the firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, in lieu of Sartin, to assume responsibility for the presentation of their case to the court.

After receiving Tamini's submissions on its costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees, which exceeded $1 million, the district court conducted a hearing on April 25, 2008, and concluded that “an appropriate sanction to compensate Tamini and sanction the Plaintiffs for the numerous events that took place culminating with the trip to Milan, Italy ... is $750,000.” The court rejected as a sanction Tamini's motion to dismiss the case. The court also ordered the plaintiffs to pay attorneys' fees and expenses in the amount of $201,881.72 incurred in seeking to reopen or to re-depose the plaintiffs' witnesses as a result of the abuses in Italy.

Through their new counsel, Travelers and CMC filed a motion to clarify, modify, and amend the sanctions orders pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), noting that the district court had “assessed such sanctions solely against the Plaintiffs without considering whether ... such sanctions should more properly be assessed instead against the Plaintiffs' former counsel, Peter A.T. Sartin.” The motion requested that the court defer the payment of all sanctions until after the completion of trial on the merits so that an evidentiary hearing could be conducted for the purpose of allocating the sanctions among Sartin, Travelers, and CMC. Summarily and without explanation, the court denied the motion.

In October 2008, the parties settled the case, with the defendants paying Travelers and CMC $5.5 million. As part of the settlement, the parties waived the right to appeal the sanctions orders.

Sartin thereafter commenced an action against Travelers and CMC in Texas state court to recover his attorneys' fees. Travelers and CMC filed a counterclaim, seeking to hold Sartin responsible for both the sanctions and the $2 million in attorneys' fees they paid Nelson Mullins. In a summary judgment motion filed in the Texas action, Sartin alleged that Travelers and CMC “ha[d] no evidence to prove that any of the $951, 881. 72 in sanctions” assessed by the South Carolina District Court in the Tamini case “included any of the costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees submitted by Tamini pursuant to the Court's Order dated October 17, 2007, or, if so, which of those costs, expenses, or attorneys' fees were for which of the specific acts or failures to act by [Sartin] that allegedly were negligent.”

To clarify the responsibility for sanctions, Travelers and CMC returned to the South Carolina District Court in September 2009 and filed a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a) to have the court clarify its “intent in its [October 17, 2007, and April 25, 2008] sanctions rulings.” Specifically, the motion “request[ed] clarification as to whether any portion of the sanctions that [the South Carolina] Court issued was a sanction for conduct that occurred after the Court's written order of October 17, 2007,” when Nelson Mullins was representing the plaintiffs. Sartin hired the McNair Firm to represent him in opposing the motion of Travelers and CMC for clarification.

After conducting a hearing on the motion, the district court (through the same district judge who had entered the sanctions orders) acted pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a) and entered an order dated December 4, 2009, granting the motion of Travelers and CMC to clarify the original sanctions orders. The court found that “[a]ll conduct that led to the $951,881.72 sanction occurred prior to the October 17, 2007 order, while Sartin was counsel of record for Plaintiffs.” The court further clarified that “[t]he entire monetary sanction was for Sartin's discovery abuses.” Finally, the court stated that “[i]t was the court's intent that Sartin, individually, be assessed monetary sanctions based upon his conduct during the course of his representation.” It therefore held that “Sartin, individually, should be assessed monetary sanctions in the amount of $951,881.72.”

On behalf of Sartin, the McNair Firm appealed the district court's Rule 60(a) clarification order, but it filed the notice of appeal two days late. The Firm filed a motion requesting that the district court approve the late filing of the appeal, which the court denied. The Firm then filed a second appeal from the order denying its motion to file an out-of-time appeal and from the court's earlier Rule 60(a) clarification order. Although this court heard arguments on the two appeals, it never issued an opinion because Sartin, Travelers, and CMC settled the Texas case with mutual releases, and Sartin instructed the McNair Firm to dismiss the two appeals taken with respect to the Rule 60(a) clarification order.

Sartin then commenced this action against the McNair Firm, alleging legal malpractice. He claimed that the McNair Firm's failure to file a timely notice of appeal in the earlier action was a proximate cause of his failure to recover attorneys' fees against Travelers and CMC in the Texas case. The district court (through a different district judge) granted the McNair Firm's motion for summary judgment by order dated December 5, 2012, holding that...