{"id":4665,"date":"2004-01-20T19:30:02","date_gmt":"2004-01-20T23:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/01\/20\/trying-too-hard-to-get-paid\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T15:00:30","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T19:00:30","slug":"trying-too-hard-to-get-paid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/01\/20\/trying-too-hard-to-get-paid\/","title":{"rendered":"trying too hard to get paid"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The wise lawyer knows that the maxim “Try, try again” is likely to annoy rather than impress most judges.\u00a0 An appellate panel in Florida found\u00a0attorney\u00a0Thomas D. Stokes to be trying, indeed, in rejecting his Motion for Rehearing on the issue of\u00a0fee recovery after a personal injury case.\u00a0\u00a0 Rather than granting rehearing, the 5th Circuit judges penned an opinion<\/a>, saying\u00a0“we only write to explain our reasoning for issuance of a show cause order directed to Appellant’s attorney.”\u00a0 \u00a0They ordered\u00a0Lawyer Stokes to explain why monetary or other sanctions should not be imposed, and they also referred the matter to the Florida Bar. <\/span><\/div>\n
\"judge Stokes’ primary sin was filing a motion for rehearing that\u00a0“simply re-argues the merits of the court\u2019s opinion, in violation of [Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure] 9.330(a).”\u00a0\u00a0 Amador v. Walker<\/a><\/em>, ___ So.2d ___ (Fla. 5th<\/sup> DCA, No. 5D02-2454, 12\/5\/2003) (thanks to sunEthics<\/a> for the pointer).\u00a0 Along the way, he also:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
    \n
  • \n
    attacked a case that he had agreed at oral argument was controlling <\/span><\/div>\n


    \n<\/span><\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  • \n
    failed to remember the basic notion that “When the supreme court construes a statute, we are bound by its construction.<\/span>“<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    proposed an alternate reading of the statute that would require “useless” and counterproductive actions by plaintiff’s attorney<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    accused the panel of distorting the law, and making\u00a0no sense<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    claimed the existence of a split in the circuits (on an issue settled by the Supreme Court!), by citing a case totally consistent with the court’s decision<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    made procedural errors in filing the Motion<\/div>\n<\/li>\n

    <\/span><\/ul>\n


    \n<\/span><\/p>\n

    The court summed up\u00a0its distress:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


    \n<\/span><\/p>\n


    \n<\/span><\/p>\n

    “When we issued a per curiam <\/em>affirmance, citing White<\/em>, it should have been obvious <\/span>that we agreed with Defendants\u2019 interpretation of White<\/em>, yet Plaintiff\u2019s counsel filed a fourteenpage <\/span>Motion for Rehearing that presents absolutely nothing new. In fact, save for the inclusion <\/span>of some new verbs like overlook, contort and misapprehend and phrases expressing displeasure with our ruling, the Motion simply repeats, in large part verbatim<\/strong>, Plaintiff\u2019s <\/span>briefs, as if to suggest to the court that we did not read the briefs the first time.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


    \n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    “Although much has been written to discourage the use of rehearing motions in this <\/span>manner, apparently the written word is not penetrating enough to get the point across.” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n


    \n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    The court also noted that, should Lawyer Stokes’ written response not be adequate, it would require his personal appearance.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The wise lawyer knows that the maxim “Try, try again” is likely to annoy rather than impress most judges.\u00a0 An appellate panel in Florida found\u00a0attorney\u00a0Thomas D. Stokes to be trying, indeed, in rejecting his Motion for Rehearing on the issue of\u00a0fee recovery after a personal injury case.\u00a0\u00a0 Rather than granting rehearing, the 5th Circuit judges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1df","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14043,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions\/14043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}