Winters By and Through Winters v. City of Oklahoma City

• Decision Date: 14 July 1987
• Docket Number: No. 63774,63774
• Citation: 740 P.2d 724,1987 OK 63
• Parties: Billy WINTERS, a Minor, By and Through His Mother and Next Best Friend, Helen WINTERS, Appellant, v. CITY OF OKLAHOMA CITY, a Municipal Corporation, Appellee.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

Page 724

740 P.2d 724

1987 OK 63

Billy WINTERS, a Minor, By and Through His Mother and Next Best Friend, Helen WINTERS, Appellant, v. CITY OF OKLAHOMA CITY, a Municipal Corporation, Appellee.

No. 63774.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

July 14, 1987.

Michael Gassaway, Hughes, Nelson & Gassaway, Oklahoma City, for appellant.

Richard C. Smith, Asst. Mun. Counselor, Oklahoma City, for appellee.

SUMMERS, Justice.

Plaintiffs' petition, which was signed and filed by attorney Michael Gassaway, alleged liability on the part of the City of Oklahoma City for injuries received by plaintiff while a student at an Oklahoma City public school. The petition stated in part:

"... [T]he City of Oklahoma City, by and through its employees/teachers has a duty to its students and its school system to take reasonable measures to prevent ... assaults and batteries upon its students."

Defendant City (Appellee) simultaneously filed a motion to dismiss and an application to assess attorney fees and costs against plaintiff's attorney, with a brief in support of the motion and application. City's motion to dismiss was predicated upon 51 O.S.1981 § 152 6(a) and (b), 153, 155(18) ¹ for the reason that the plaintiff's On January 10, 1985, the attorney filed a motion to reconsider, without citing any authority and without a brief in support. This motion was set for rehearing on January 25, 1985, and was denied at that time as being untimely filed. He then instituted this appeal from the denial of his motion to reconsider which sought only the reversal of the trial court's decision in assessing attorney's fees against plaintiff's attorney. City moved to dismiss the appeal. This court in an order issued April 15, 1985 treated the motion to reconsider as the functional equivalent of a timely motion for new trial and ruled that this appeal, commenced on the 10th day following the denial of a motion for new trial, was timely.

petition failed to state a claim ² against the City as a political subdivision because City, a municipality, does not have the power nor the authority to operate, nor does it operate a public school system. The City cited in its brief that on at least three previous occasions (twice in 1982 and once in 1983) the same attorney had asserted that the defendant City was responsible for the acts of employees of a public school system and that the City had been dismissed from each lawsuit pursuant to 51 O.S.1981 §§ 152(6)(a) and b, 153 and 155(18). In support of its application to assess attorney's fees and costs City argued that the plaintiff's attorney was acting in bad faith or obdurate obstinacy in continuing to assert the same theory of liability against the City despite the rulings in the three previous lawsuits. The trial court sustained the City's motion to dismiss and found the attorney's conduct in the continued assertion of municipal liability for acts of an employee of an independent school system to be oppressive under City National Bank and Trust v. Owens. ³ Hearing was set for January 2, 1985, to determine a reasonable attorney's fee to be assessed against the attorney. On that date he failed to appear, whereupon the court took evidence of the amount of time expended defending the action and evidence on a reasonable fee, and awarded City $900.00 in attorney's fees as costs against attorney Gassaway and not against the plaintiff.

On appeal we are presented with two issues: (1) Whether the trial court had the inherent equitable power to assess attorney's fees and costs against the attorney for one of the parties and; (2) if it did, whether the assessment in this case was proper.

Under the so called "American Rule" governing the award of attorney's fees to a prevailing party, attorney's fees are not ordinarily recoverable in the absence of a statute or enforceable contract. However, this rule does not serve as an absolute bar to the awarding of attorney's fees in the absence of statute or contract.

In Owens this court gave its sanction to an award of attorney's fees against an opponent under the "bad faith" exception to the American Rule. The trial court in the exercise of its equitable powers saw fit to tax against a party, as an item of cost, all the unnecessary expenses incurred because that party had acted in bad faith and for oppressive reasons. We held that because a party's actions were oppressive and because the oppressive action of a party was, even at common law, recognized as giving rise to an exception to the American Rule regarding the awarding of attorney's fees, the trial court "in the exercise of its inherent equitable powers, did not exceed its jurisdiction, powers, or decretion" ⁴ in awarding partial attorney's fees against a party opponent.

The power to levy fees against a party who has litigated in bad faith arises from the court's traditional equitable powers. Courts of equity in the United States were endowed with the judicial powers possessed by the High Court of Chancery of England at the time of adoption of the Constitution. ⁵ Included among these powers was the power to levy attorney's fees for bad faith litigation. ⁶ Owens recognized the nonstatutory power to levy attorney's fees for bad faith conduct as a power the district courts of Oklahoma possess having full equity jurisdiction.

In Roadway Express Inc. v. Piper, ⁷ the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for personal liability of an attorney for an opponent's attorney's fees. The Court approved in principle such an assessment as an exercise of the court's inherent supervisory powers. ⁸ The court defined "inherent powers" as those which "are necessary to the exercise of all others". ⁹ These are the court's inherent powers to manage its own affairs so as to achieve the orderly and timely disposition of cases. These powers are implicit in the existence of a judicial system, and are a necessary incident to the exercise of a court's jurisdiction. These powers have been expressed in such practices as the contempt citation, sanctions for abusive litigation such as dismissal for failure to prosecute, and the imposition of attorney fees on a party for bad faith litigation. ¹⁰

Link v. Wabash R.R. ¹¹ held that among the court's inherent powers to deter abusive practices was the power to dismiss an action sua sponte for lack of prosecution. This power emanated not from a "rule or statute, but [from] the control necessarily invested in courts to manage their own affairs" ¹² so as to achieve the orderly and expeditious disposition of cases. The Court in Roadway indicated that the assessment of attorney's fees is certainly a much less severe sanction than outright dismissal. ¹³

The court in Roadway approved the award of attorney's fees for either substantive or procedural bad faith. The court stated:

"The bad-faith exception for the award of attorneys' fees is not restricted to cases where the action is filed in bad faith. '[B]ad faith may be found, not only in the actions that led to the lawsuit, but also in the conduct of the litigation.' " ¹⁴

With respect to the issue of awarding an attorney's fee against an attorney of one of the parties, the court concluded:

"The power of a court over members of its bar is at least as great as its authority over litigants. If a court may tax counsel fees against a party who has litigated in bad faith, it certainly may assess those expenses against counsel who willfully abuse judicial process." ¹⁵

The court noted that like other sanctions, attorney's fees certainly should not be assessed without proper notice and hearing. But such sanctions are within a court's powers. The court remanded the case to the district court for a specific finding that counsel's misconduct constituted bad faith.

The court stated that a finding of bad faith would have to precede the sanctions under the court's inherent power of assessing attorney fees against counsel. ¹⁶

Having recognized in Owens the established exception to the American Rule that permits an award of attorney's fees against a party who litigated in bad faith, ¹⁷ we now hold that the trial court in the exercise of its inherent equitable powers can tax against a party's attorney as an item of costs all unnecessary expenses incurred because of that attorney's oppressive actions. Like other sanctions, attorney's fees should not be assessed lightly or without fair notice and an opportunity for a hearing. But in a proper case, such sanctions are within a court's powers.

In the case before us the attorney for plaintiff intentionally filed and prosecuted a type of claim for the fourth time (twice in 1982, once in 1983, and here in 1984) that under Oklahoma law lacks plausible legal or factual basis upon which the plaintiffs could have recovered against the City. The claim is contrary to Oklahoma statute and case law. Each previous lawsuit had been dismissed pursuant to 51 O.S.1981 §§ 152(6)(a) and (b), 153, and 155(18). ¹⁸

In Conway v. Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. ¹⁹ the same attorney (Gassaway) sued a school district. This court commented

"Three months after the accident the child's attorney wrote a letter to the school district's insurer advising of a claim for injury. The attorney apparently under the misapprehension that the School District was a subdivision of the City of Oklahoma City, sent written notice of the claim to the clerk of Oklahoma City rather than to the clerk of the school district as required in 51 O.S.1981 § 156(B)...."

The attorney was thus put on notice that an independent school district and the City of Oklahoma City are separate political subdivisions.

The attorney argues on appeal that an attorney should not be punished for pursuing new or imaginative causes of action. In effect he argues that there will be no effective system of private counsel if private attorneys are discouraged from and/or punished for pursuing new and/or imaginative causes of action. We agree that the independence of the private bar is an important consideration....