Published Opinion Has A Nice Discussion Of CCP § 907 Frivolous Appeal Standards.
We commend everyone to read the 2/3 DCA’s published decision in Malek Media Group LLC v. AXGC Corp., Case No. B299743 (2d Dist., Div. 3 Dec. 16, 2020) (published), which contains a nice discussion of the standards for appeals sanctions under Code of Civil Procedure section 907, but also reinforces that litigants and their attorneys need to be civil—avoiding sexist and crazy theories which waste parties’ resources and make the appellate courts waste taxpayer resources.
What happened here is that an arbitration party challenged an adverse arbitration award and superior court’s denial of a motion to vacate the award. Appellant’s briefing on appeal was laced with far-fetched conspiracy theories, sexism, homophobia, personal attacks against the arbitrator, and failure to abide by appellate court rules as far as briefing and judicial notice requests. The appellate court affirmed the merits of the award, but then went on to sanction appellant and its counsel under CCP § 907—both the objective and subjective prongs in a decision which is worthy of reading by both litigators and appellate practitioners.
The end result was that appellant and its counsel, jointly and severally, were liable for $46,000 in sanctions to respondent and an additional $10,000 to the appeals court clerk for the time spent by the appellate panel in considering the frivolous appeal. Justice Dhanidina authored this well-penned decision.
BLOG ADDITIONAL COMMENT—The arbitrator was Ambassador David Huebner (Ret.), who served as an ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Co-contributor Mike remembers Ambassador Huebner well, because they were at Irell & Manella for some overlapping period of time. Mike wishes him well—he was a stand-up individual.
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