A Lawyer Way Out Of Her League Gets Benchslapped By Frustrated Judge

An Indiana Court of Appeals judge takes an attorney to task for her failure to adhere to... any of the appellate rules.

onOctober 26, 2015 at 12:56 PMMay 30, 2016 at 4:05 PM

It all started when Kristin R. Fox, an Indiana attorney, took on a case of a commercial painter who claimed he hadn’t been paid for work done in an apartment complex, allegedly authorized by the building manager. Granted, no groundbreaking legal precedent there, but a perfectly unremarkable case. Then it was revealed, under oath, that the painter created the invoices for the work he claimed to not be paid for after meeting with Fox. The trial court imposes sanctions, since fabricating evidence is a pretty big no-no. Not a good look, but also not particularly remarkable.

Then Fox appealed the decision on behalf of her client, and that’s when the Indiana Court of Appeals and the delightfully snide words of Judge Margret Robb come into play.

It seems Fox submitted a brief with some page numbering and citation issues. Then when submitting the corrected brief, she tried to slip a little something past the goalie. The Indiana Lawyer reports:

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From Pilot and Above The Law

The appellate judges had issues with [painter Eric] Brazier’s corrected appellate brief, which Fox said was going to address page numbers and citations. But what was filed was “at best, an abject failure to understand the most basic requirements of appellate briefing” and “(a)t worst, (was) a blatant attempt to make additional argument without complying with the page and word limitations of a brief,” Judge Margret Robb wrote.

But given the other, numerous errors in the brief, Judge Robb took Fox to task for her failure to adhere to… any of the appellate rules:

In a lengthy footnote, Robb wrote, “Counsel’s failures to follow even the simplest rules regarding the content of an appellate brief have made our review of this case unnecessarily difficult. We commend Maple Lane for largely refraining from comment on the quality of the brief and endeavoring to respond to the legal arguments. Were it within our purview to do so, we would order Brazier’s counsel to verify to this court her attendance at a continuing legal education program regarding appellate practice before submitting any further briefs to this court. Although it would be within our purview to order counsel to show cause why she should not be held in contempt for willful violation of this court’s order granting leave to amend the brief to correct technical errors only and specifically prohibiting any substantive changes, counsel does not appear to frequently represent clients on appeal nor has she been previously cited for poor briefing practices. Therefore, we have chosen not to take such extreme measures at this juncture. Nonetheless, we admonish counsel in the strongest possible terms to carefully review the appellate rules and fully conform her briefs to their requirements in the future.”

When the judge applauds your opponent for not pointing out your mistakes, since that would make them look petty, you know you didn’t hit it out of the park. Though the court found it could not require Fox’s participation in an appellate practice CLE, perhaps she should take one anyway. It’s preferable to another benchslap.