Warning: Don’t Copy Your Opponent’s Work
Here’s some risk management advice for litigators: don’t be tempted to copy portions of your adversary’s motion and paste it into your own.
It won’t help your case, and it might get you sanctioned.
That’s the story in Pennsylvania, where a federal judge ordered an attorney to pay more than $8,400 in sanctions for copying parts of their opponent’s motion.
“The practice of law is not easy; it demands thorough research and writing, nearly always on a deadline,” wrote Judge Gene E.K. Pratter of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in an October 17 order. “A quick turnaround does not excuse a lawyer’s ethical duties to the court, and there is never an excuse for appropriating the work of another lawyer—let alone opposing counsel—and presenting it as one’s own.”
The copying was “neither slight nor subtle,” the judge said.
From the ABA Journal:
“[The attorney] apparently lifted the material from a plaintiffs’ motion to exclude lay-opinion testimony of a police officer that she received the day before it was filed—which was also the day before the deadline for such motions. On the day of the deadline, [the attorney] filed her own motion to exclude lay-opinion testimony by the two plaintiffs … cited the same reasons as the plaintiffs did, but the similarities didn’t end there, Pratter wrote. Nearly every paragraph of [the] motion and brief’“contain language lifted word for word’ from the plaintiffs’ motion, the judge said.”
Read the ABA Journal article here. Read other accounts here and here.
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ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct: Preamble
[1] A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.
[2] As a representative of clients, a lawyer performs various functions. As advisor, a lawyer provides a client with an informed understanding of the client's legal rights and obligations and explains their practical implications. As advocate, a lawyer zealously asserts the client's position under the rules of the adversary system. As negotiator, a lawyer seeks a result advantageous to the client but consistent with requirements of honest dealings with others. As an evaluator, a lawyer acts by examining a client's legal affairs and reporting about them to the client or to others.
[5] A lawyer's conduct should conform to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer's business and personal affairs. A lawyer should use the law's procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others. A lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers and public officials. While it is a lawyer's duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action, it is also a lawyer's duty to uphold legal process.
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