Werner v. Complex Media, Inc
- Denise Cote
- 1:19-cv-10094
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 6
In Werner v. ComplexMedia, Judge Cote denied Ngo’s motion to stay, removed him as counsel, and required substitute counsel or Werner to proceed without a lawyer.
Attorney Rayminh L. Ngo was removed as counsel. Jeffery Werner was required to obtain qualified substitute counsel or proceed without a lawyer, and ComplexMedia, Inc. was affected by the court’s case-management ruling.
What happened
In Jeffery Werner v. ComplexMedia, Inc., attorney Rayminh Ngo asked to represent Werner as the main trial lawyer in a copyright case after another attorney withdrew. The court had required the main trial lawyer to attend required conferences in New York.
The court said Ngo had repeatedly sent unprepared lawyers to conferences and had filed about 60 copyright cases in the district without a merits decision in any of them. It also found that Ngo’s statements about attending a settlement conference in person conflicted with his same-day request to attend by telephone.
Judge Denise Cote denied Ngo’s request to pause the earlier order and terminated him as counsel. The court required a qualified attorney to file a notice of appearance by April 3, 2020; otherwise, Werner had to proceed without a lawyer.
The detailed version
- Werner v. Complex Media, Inc · No. 1:19-cv-10094
- Denise Cote
- Mar. 24, 2020
Background
Jeffery Werner brought a copyright-infringement action against ComplexMedia, Inc., doing business as complex.com, and other defendants identified as Does 1 through 10. Attorney Rayminh L. Ngo filed the action for Werner. The court had scheduled an initial pretrial conference and required the attorney who would serve as principal trial counsel—the lawyer responsible for handling the case at trial—to attend.
At the initial conference, Jeanne Weisneck appeared for Werner and said she would be lead counsel, although she had not spoken with Werner and did not know basic facts about the case. She later moved to withdraw. The court granted that request on March 16, 2020, and ordered Werner to proceed without a lawyer unless a qualified attorney who could serve as principal trial counsel and attend required New York conferences filed a notice of appearance by March 20.
Motion and Court’s Analysis
On March 18, Ngo asked the court to stay, or pause, the March 16 order and allow him to resume serving as principal trial counsel. He said he was prepared to travel to New York and personally attend future conferences, including a settlement conference scheduled for March 26. That same day, however, he asked Magistrate Judge Wang to let him attend the settlement conference by telephone because the COVID-19 outbreak made traveling to New York unsafe. ComplexMedia opposed Ngo’s request.
Judge Cote relied on the federal courts’ inherent authority to manage cases efficiently and sanction conduct that abuses the judicial process. The court found that Ngo had repeatedly outsourced conference attendance to attorneys who were not prepared to represent Werner. It also found that his March 18 statements about appearing in person were directly contradicted by his same-day request to appear by telephone. The court said this conduct interfered with the orderly handling of cases and that the conflicting representation could not be tolerated.
Disposition
The court denied Ngo’s March 18 motion to stay the March 16 order. It terminated Ngo as counsel in the case. The court ordered that an attorney able to serve as principal trial counsel, including attending conferences in New York when required, file a notice of appearance by April 3, 2020. If no such notice was filed, Werner was required to proceed without a lawyer. The opinion did not decide the underlying copyright-infringement claims.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.