Attorney Fees as Sanctions

• Author: Steven K. Yoda
• Pages: 24-25

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Aside from need-based attorney fees, many

states separately permit attorney fees to be

awarded as a form of monetary sanctions

against truculent parties. Section 271 of

California’s Family Code, for example,

permits courts to award attorney fees when “the conduct of

[a] party or attorney . . . frustrates the policy of the law to

promote settlement . . . and . . . to reduce the cost of

litigation by encouraging cooperation between the parties

and attorneys.” Rule 130-1.1 of New York’s Administrative

Rules of the Unied Court System & Uniform Rules of the

Trial Courts permits courts to award attorney fees “resulting

from frivolous conduct.” “Frivolous conduct” includes

conduct “undertaken primarily to delay or prolong the

resolution of the litigation, or to harass or maliciously injure

another.” In Texas, although there is no specic statute

authorizing the award of attorney fees as a form of sanctions,

courts possess the inherent authority to do so. (See Kutch v.

Del Mar College, 831 S.W.2d 506, 509 (Tex. App. 1992)

Attorney Fees as Sanctions

By STEVEN K. YODA

(“Texas courts have inherent power to sanction for bad faith

conduct during litigation”).) Most states also have specic

discovery statutes permitting awards of attorney fees as a

form monetary sanctions for discovery violations.

Determining what does (or does not) constitute sanction-

able conduct in any given case rests within the sound

discretion of the court. A survey of the case law, though,

illustrates the types of conduct that has been sanctioned in

the past and provides guidance on the types of practices to

avoid. Parties have been sanctioned for:

• attempting to hide assets or obfuscate nancial transac-

tions (see, e.g., In re Marriage of Feldman, 153 Cal. App.

4th 1470 (2007); Liston v. Liston, 269 P.3d 169 (Utah Ct.

App. 2011));

• failing to produce documents and cooperate in discovery

(see, e.g., In re Marriage of Sorge, 202 Cal. App. 4th 626

(2012); Ramin v. Ramin, 915 A.2d 790 (Conn. 2007);

Reynolds v. Reynolds, 64 N.E.3d 829 (Ind. 2016); In re

Published in Family Advocate, Volume 42, Number 4, Spring 2020. © 2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof

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