Firsov v. Airlines

Background

Pro se plaintiff Sergey Firsov moved for sanctions against counsel for Defendant Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11. Lufthansa opposed the motion.

Firsov raised four grounds. He argued that Lufthansa’s counsel improperly investigated his family life by filing a declaration attaching the California Judicial Council List of Vexatious Litigants, which included his name. He also argued that counsel acted in bad faith by attaching a LexisNexis summary of litigation involving him. Firsov further argued that counsel ignored his request to change a hearing date because he would be on vacation. Finally, he asserted that counsel misstated Lufthansa’s registered-agent address by omitting “Suite 700.”

Legal standard

Rule 11 requires attorneys to certify that pleadings and motions are supported by the facts, have a reasonable legal basis, and are not filed for an improper purpose. Sanctions are reserved for rare cases involving clearly frivolous, legally unreasonable, unsupported, or improperly motivated filings. The court also stated that a groundless Rule 11 motion can itself be sanctionable and that Rule 11 sanctions may apply to a person proceeding without a lawyer.

Court’s analysis

The court rejected all four grounds in Firsov’s motion. It said that the vexatious-litigant list and the LexisNexis litigation summary were matters of public record. The court also stated that Lufthansa’s failure to agree to a hearing-date change was not sanctionable because Firsov could have filed an administrative motion requesting a new date. Regarding the registered-agent address, the court found that Firsov offered no factual support for inferring that counsel intentionally misrepresented the address by omitting “Suite 700.”

The court then considered Lufthansa’s request to sanction Firsov for filing the motion. It found that Firsov falsely represented that another court had ruled that he could seek emotional-distress damages for his dogs. According to the court, the cited prior related proceeding instead involved permission to amend claims after Firsov initially named the wrong defendant. The court also noted that Firsov had recently been sanctioned in that earlier round of the case for misrepresenting the court’s rulings. The court agreed that sanctions were required to deter what it called Firsov’s vexatious and abusive conduct.

Disposition

The court denied Firsov’s motion for sanctions. It granted Lufthansa’s request for sanctions based on Firsov’s filing of the motion and warned that future abusive or bad-faith filings could result in additional sanctions. The court ordered Lufthansa to file, within seven days, a brief and counsel’s declaration addressing the reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in opposing the sanctions motion, including counsel’s hourly rates and hours worked. Firsov was given one week to respond. The order did not determine the amount of fees.