Sunday, December 6, 2020

Article on Trump's legal teams violations of Rule 11

Unless you have been hiding somewhere with no access to the news, you know that there has been a lot of press recently on Trump's legal team's efforts to litigate issues related to the election results.  A lot has been written about the incompetence of the lawyers involved and about whether they should be sanctioned.  There is even an effort to get Rudy Giuliani disbarred, which is not likely to happen, even though he has proven to be incompetent and engaged in frivolous litigation.

One of the reasons there is likely not going to be sanctions is that judges tend not to get involved and not to impose sanctions for violations of the rules of civil procedure.  Obviously, if they did, in theory, lawyers would be deterred from engaging in that type of conduct; but the reality is that judges don't act as often as they could.

If you are interested in this discussion, you should take a look at an article by Elie Mystal (here) in which he makes the argument for sanctions under rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and at this article by the ABA which argues there is a high standard for imposing sanctions.

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