Opinion
No. 08-30362 Summary Calendar.
December 2, 2008.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans No. 2:05-CV-4182.
Before KING, DENNIS, and OWEN, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff-appellant Ashton R. O'Dwyer, Jr. appeals the district court's Final Appealable Judgment of March 24, 2008, which imposed sanctions against him in the amount of $7,058.50 under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and 28 U.S.C. § 1927 for filing duplicative, frivolous suits. We affirm.
O'Dwyer raises five arguments on appeal: (1) the State may not recover attorneys' fees because its attorneys are salaried employees and, therefore, the State could not incur legal fees; (2) the sum of $7,058.50 was unreasonable; (3) the district judge had a personal bias that "cast a pall over" the judgment; (4) the district court erred by denying his motion for sanctions against the Louisiana Department of Justice for "fraud against the court"; and (5) the district court erred by denying his motion to disqualify the Louisiana Department of Justice from representing the State in all matters involving O'Dwyer.
The notice of appeal in this case only included the district court's final judgment sanctioning O'Dwyer. Regarding the third issue — the personal bias of the district judge — O'Dwyer has filed, and the district court denied, two motions to recuse the district judge. Neither of the motions to recuse is part of this appeal. The fourth and fifth issues raised by O'Dwyer are currently on appeal in case number 07-30349, which is an appeal of the district court's April 3, 2007 Order and Reasons. We will not address issues that are not relevant to this appeal. Accordingly, we consider only O'Dwyer's first two arguments.
O'Dwyer's first argument — that the State cannot incur attorneys' fees because it has a salaried staff of attorneys — has no legal support. To the contrary, we have held that a court may sanction a party by awarding attorneys' fees to a government entity using the prevailing market rate in the relevant legal community. See United States v. City of Jackson, 359 F.3d 727, 733 (5th Cir. 2004); see also Napier v. Thirty or More Unidentified Federal Agents, Employees or Officers, 855 F.2d 1080, 1092 (3d Cir. 1988) ("We have no doubt that the government may recover under Rule 11 when confronted with a frivolous action."). Thus, O'Dwyer's first argument lacks merit.
Second, O'Dwyer claims that the attorneys' fees should be disallowed as unreasonable because the case was overstaffed, the State churned fees, and its briefs included boilerplate language. We review the reasonableness of sanctions under Rule 11 and 28 U.S.C. § 1927 for abuse of discretion. Skidmore Energy, Inc. v. KPMG, 455 F.3d 564, 566 (5th Cir. 2006) (Rule 11); Cambridge Toxicology Group, Inc. v. Exnicios, 495 F.3d 169, 180 (5th Cir. 2007) (§ 1927). The district court considered these same arguments and concluded that they had no merit, adding that they could "be characterized as containing the same kind of vituperative and unprofessional hyperbole about which this Court has admonished Mr. O'Dwyer in the past." O'Dwyer has not presented a persuasive argument as to why this conclusion was based on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.
For the reasons set forth above, we AFFIRM the district court's judgment.