Ramachandran v. City of Los Altos
- Virginia Demarchi
- 5:18-cv-01223
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 6
In Ramachandran v. City of Los Altos, Judge Demarchi denied sanctions against plaintiff’s counsel, finding the conduct neither reckless nor in bad faith.
The ruling affected defendants City of Los Altos, Kirk Ballard, David Kornfield, and Christopher Jordan, and counsel for plaintiff Satish Ramachandran.
What happened
Ramachandran v. City of Los Altos involved defendants’ request for sanctions against Satish Ramachandran’s lawyers. The defendants said the lawyers improperly disclosed two experts before the court decided whether to allow an amended complaint and waited too long to withdraw them.
The defendants argued that this conduct unnecessarily increased the case’s costs, including expert fees, deposition expenses, and lawyers’ fees. Ramachandran’s lawyers responded that the case schedule required the expert disclosures and that the experts could also support his damages claim.
The court denied the sanctions motion. Judge Demarchi found that the disclosures were not unreasonable and that the lawyers’ later conduct, although troubling and not fully forthcoming, did not amount to reckless or bad-faith conduct under the sanctions statute.
The detailed version
- Ramachandran v. City of Los Altos · No. 5:18-cv-01223
- Virginia Demarchi
- Dec. 30, 2020
Background
Satish Ramachandran brought civil-rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of Los Altos and Los Altos employees Kirk Ballard, David Kornfield, and Christopher Jordan. The claims alleged violations of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The court’s scheduling order required opening expert disclosures by February 19, 2020, and rebuttal disclosures by March 11, 2020. On February 11, Ramachandran moved for permission to file a fourth amended complaint that would add defendants and claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Before the court ruled on that motion, Ramachandran disclosed Nina Daruwalla and George W. Woods, Jr. as experts. Daruwalla offered an opinion about the value of Ramachandran’s property, and Woods offered an opinion about Ramachandran’s mental condition.
On April 20, 2020, the court granted in part and denied in part Ramachandran’s motion to amend. The court concluded that adding most of the proposed defendants and claims would require reopening discovery and would substantially delay the case. The parties then extended the expert-discovery schedule. Defendants deposed Daruwalla and Woods, disclosed Bradford Thompson as a rebuttal expert to Daruwalla, and filed motions seeking to exclude the two experts from trial.
Ramachandran’s counsel later told defense counsel that the two experts had been retained for the proposed conspiracy claim and withdrew them. Defendants withdrew their motions in limine but sought reimbursement for expenses they said had been incurred unnecessarily.
Sanctions standard
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, a court may require a lawyer to personally pay excess costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees caused by unreasonably and vexatiously multiplying court proceedings. The court explained that such a finding may be based on recklessness or bad faith, but bad faith is not required.
The parties’ arguments
Defendants sought sanctions for two alleged forms of misconduct: disclosing the experts before receiving permission to amend the complaint, and failing to withdraw them immediately after the court denied the relevant portions of the amendment request and declined to relate the separate RICO action to this case. Defendants claimed $39,400.23 in expenses, plus $3,800 in expert fees connected with the depositions of Daruwalla and Woods.
Ramachandran’s counsel argued that the case-management schedule required disclosing the experts before the court ruled on the amendment motion. Counsel also argued that the experts’ testimony could support Ramachandran’s damages claim even without the proposed RICO claim. Counsel said they ultimately withdrew the experts after reviewing defendants’ motions in limine and determining that separating damages among the parties would be impossible.
Court’s analysis and ruling
The court held that disclosing the experts before the amendment decision was not unreasonable given the case schedule. Although counsel should preferably have told defendants that the experts were expected to testify only about a claim not yet part of the case, the court found that this lack of professional courtesy did not rise to the level of bad faith or recklessness.
The court found counsel’s handling of the later withdrawal more troubling. Counsel’s current explanation was inconsistent with the June 17 communication stating that the experts had been retained only for the RICO conspiracy claim. The court stated that counsel appeared not to have been completely forthcoming about why the experts were withdrawn and noted that this conduct did not meet the court’s expectations for communications with opposing counsel. Even so, the court found that the conduct did not rise to the level of bad faith or recklessness required for sanctions under § 1927. The court also observed that withdrawing the experts after defendants filed a meritorious motion in limine likely saved defendants considerable expense because no hearing was needed.
The court denied defendants’ motion for sanctions. It did not consider defendants’ separate request for sanctions under the court’s inherent authority because that argument was raised for the first time in their reply brief.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.