Attorney Misconduct, Biglaw, Cozen O'Connor, Depositions, Legal Ethics, Litigators, Rudeness, Texas

'[Bleep] With Me And You Will Have A Huge [Bleep]hole,' Warns Biglaw Partner

A Biglaw partner in Texas apparently warned opposing counsel not to 'f***' with him. I have no reason to doubt his sincerity...

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We’ve seen some heated deposition transcripts in the past, but we didn’t know that simply scheduling a deposition could get so nasty. Clearly, we’ve never practiced in Texas, a place where Biglaw lawyers occasionally have to contend with “pansy” opposing counsel.

And, you know, have sanctions sought against them for their allegedly inappropriate email correspondence.

We’ve got a fun one today, folks. A partner at Cozen O’Connor in Dallas sent a string of allegedly abusive emails to opposing counsel when the lawyers couldn’t agree on a schedule for depositions. And we know all this because the emails are part of the record in the motion to sanction the Cozen partner.

UPDATE (5/17/2012, 11 AM): We’ve added a link to the full motion for sanctions, after the jump.

Actually, make that former partner. Keep reading, to find out what may have led to the partner’s departure from the firm….

Let’s list the main players. At the time of these events, Martin Sweeney was a member of Cozen O’Connor in Dallas. He was trying to schedule three witnesses to be deposed by Chad Arnette and Bill Warren, who are both partners at Kelly Hart & Hallman. There was some confusion — it appears that Arnette didn’t want to travel on a Sunday and thought they were scheduling the depos for the first week of April, while Sweeney was trying to accommodate Arnette, yet still get the depositions done in March.

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After the miscommunication, Sweeney sent the following to Arnette, according to the exhibits in Arnette’s motions for sanctions against Sweeney:

Wait, it gets so much better:

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You’ll notice that a third person, Mallory Beagles, is also included on the email chain. Beagles is just a first-year associate with Kelly Hart. Arnette or Warren decided to remove Beagles from the chain, because there’s really no reason for a young lawyer to see Mommy and Daddy Partner fight like this. But Sweeney insisted on putting Beagles back on the chain: “I added her back on because she needs to grow up.”

Okay then. What kind of grown-up behavior did Beagles need to learn? Well, after Warren told Sweeney, “Give it a rest, Marty,” Sweeney told Warren, “Don’t f**k with me Bill. Big mistake.”

Presumably trying to get back on topic, Sweeney then emailed the Kelly Hart team asking if they had lined up local counsel. But Sweeney apparently couldn’t resist adding this: “I will shove my boot so far up Chad’s ass, that’ll he talkin out of it [sic]. Get it Bill?”

Oh, I think the two of them “got it.” Because the next email from Chad Arnette informed Martin Sweeney that they would be seeking sanctions against him and his clients, based on Sweeney’s inappropriate remarks over email.

That really pissed Sweeney off. If you think about it, we haven’t even had any ad hominem attacks or threats of violence. But this is Texas, so you know they’re coming….

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