Breach of Contract

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: James Hunt v. Moore Brothers, Inc., et al.

Case No.: 16-2055

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Breach of Contract

James Hunt worked as a truck driver in Nebraska. On July 1, 2010, he signed an Independent Contractor Operating Agreement with Moore Brothers, a small company located in Norfolk, Nebraska. Three years later, Hunt and Moore renewed the Agreement. Before the second term expired, however, relations between the parties soured. Hunt hired Attorney Jana Yocum Rine to sue Moore on his behalf. She did so in federal court, raising a wide variety of claims, but paying little heed to the fact that the Agreements contained arbitration clauses. Rine resisted arbitration, primarily on the theory that the clause was unenforceable as a matter of Nebraska law. Tired of what it regarded as a flood of frivolous arguments and motions, the district court granted Moore’s motion for sanctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and ordered Rine to pay Moore about $7,500. The court later dismissed the entire action without prejudice.

We have no need to consider whether the sanctions imposed by the district court were also justified under the court’s inherent power. See Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45– 46 (1991). Nor are we saying that the district court would have erred if it had denied Moore’s sanctions motion. We hold only that it lay within the district court’s broad discretion, in light of all the circumstances of this case, to impose a calibrated sanction on Rine for her conduct of the litigation, culminating in the objectively baseless motion she filed in opposition to arbitration. We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s order imposing sanctions.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.