  |
  |
  |
    
  
   |
 | |||
|
|
|
|
| |||
changes to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11. Not only documents signed by an attorney, but also documents he "presents" by "filing" or "later advocating" entail the lawyer's certification of proper purpose, warranted by law or a nonfrivolous argument for extension or reversal of the law, and evidentiary factual support. Ethics rules are in accord. Bankruptcy Rule 7037 sanctions failure to cooperate in discovery, and Bankruptcy Rule 7016 sanctions failure to comply with court scheduling and pretrial orders or cooperate in discovery and pretrial practice. 28 U.S.C. § 1927 also prohibits unreasonable and vexatious litigation.
2. Both creditors' and debtors' counsel may be guilty of abusive litigation in a bankruptcy context. The number of cases cited at West Bankruptcy Digest Keynote 2187, "frivolity or bad faith; sanctions," is appallingly lengthy. Debtors' counsel may file cases in bad faith voluntarily, and creditors' counsel may file cases in bad faith involuntarily or bad faith, unauthorized adversary proceedings. Debtor plaintiffs have been sanctioned for frivolous adversary proceeding complaints, and defendants have been sanctioned for raising meritless defenses. Counsel have been sanctioned for bad faith objections, frivolous motions and appeals, and failing to cooperate with discovery requests. Burdensome, unnecessary discovery requests may likewise be deemed sanctionable. And counsel for the debtor all too often acquiesces in his client's request to list all claims as disputed on the schedules, or file blanket objections to claims, which creditors may not dispute only because economically infeasible to do so. Strategies designed to make
This outline is adapted from Chapter 27, Ethical Responsibilities, Norton Bankruptcy Law & Practice 2d (Thomson-West 2005)
