The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has largely affirmed a sanctions award against a plaintiff’s attorney in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, ordering the attorney to pay more than $10,000 in fees to a collection attorney that was sued.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Boscoe Chung v. Lamb can be accessed by clicking here.
This case has been back and forth between the Tenth Circuit and the District Court for more than five years, and the circumstances behind the suit are unusual. Ultimately, the plaintiff’s attorney was sanctioned because she failed to disclose an agreement where the original plaintiff had assigned her FDCPA claim to the attorney before the suit was filed. The attorney resisted producing an unredacted copy of the engagement letter for 23 months after the defendant formally requested it, only making it available after two motions to compel.
A District Court judge originally awarded the defendant $33,000 in fees, which the plaintiff’s attorney appealed. The sanctions award was vacated and remanded back to the District Court, who, this time, awarded the defendant $13,392.66, which was again appealed to the Tenth Circuit. The plaintiff’s attorney argued that the District Court erred in ruling that sanctions were justified, that the award was improper because it was not tailored to compensate only for excess fees incurred as a result of the sanctionable conduct, and that the District Court judge ignored the law of the case.
This time, though, the Appeals Court largely agreed with the District Court judge. “The district court’s determination appears to us as within the bounds of permissible choice,” the Appeals Court wrote.
