Last week, DaimlerChrysler Corporation was joined by North Star Dodge Sales as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against three Texas lawyers who purportedly used falsified evidence in a 1998 lawsuit blaming the automaker and dealership for a crash that killed four children. In the earlier product liability suit, state District Judge David Peeples threw out the case and fined the three lawyers almost $900,000 after learning that the claimed defective steering column was intact. Shockingly, this information came from a report made by the plaintiff lawyers' own investigator.

In dismissing the original product case, Judge Peeples called the firm's conduct "an egregious example of the worst kind of abuse of the judicial system." Evidence presented by the automaker in the new lawsuit accuses the lawyers of conspiring to commit several forms of fraud, from tampering with evidence to attempted bribery of witnesses. In addition to filing the lawsuit to discourage frivolous and fraudulent court claims, the automaker is reported to be preparing a complaint to the state bar association.

Inasmuch as a corporation's decision to file a separate lawsuit seeking punitive damages against the plaintiffs' lawyers may be an emerging tactic, court rules have long existed providing for sanctions and punishment against lawyers found guilty of wrongdoing. For example, Federal Rule 46(b)(1)(B) states that a lawyer who "is guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the court's bar" may be disciplined or disbarred.

Perhaps the most common form of sanctions imposed against opposing counsel occurs under Rule 11, a federal rule that enables judges to penalize lawyers who violate the provisions contained therein. For example, Rule 11 requires the attorney signing pleadings to certify that the signer's knowledge, information, and belief were "formed after reasonable inquiry," that the pleading or motion is "well grounded in fact and is warranted by existing law or a good faith argument for the extension, modification or reversal of existing law, and that it is not interposed for any improper purpose." Thus, under Rule 11 an attorney is required to engage in additional investigation before signing the pleading. And Rule 11 sanctions are not the most potent arrow in corporate defense counsel's quiver. While those sanctions may deter the filing of claims and result in a dismissal, they do not represent adjudication on the merits when granted.

Sanctions are also appropriately imposed against lawyers under federal law -- title, 28, section 1927 -- for conduct that, viewed objectively, manifests either intentional or reckless disregard of the attorney's duties as officers of the court. In such situations, the court often examines whether plaintiffs' counsel's conduct, when viewed objectively, imposed unreasonable and unwarranted burdens on the court and opposing parties, and whether plaintiffs' counsel acted recklessly or with indifference to the law.

Several years ago, section 1927 sanctions were entered against a plaintiff's attorney in a products liability suit against Upjohn Company. In that case, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the decision of the lower court judge ordering the plaintiff's attorney to pay costs and legal fees of the defendant because the attorney "multiplied the litigation unreasonably and vexatiously." With an additional slap on the attorney's hand, the court noted that "[c]ounsel is obliged to research the law before filing suits."

More recently, the same panel of the Seventh Circuit removed the attorney from the roll of attorneys authorized to practice because she failed to pay the sanctions entered under section 1927.

Earlier this year, in class Action product liability litigation involving the diet drug "fen-phen," the manufacturer filed a motion for an injunction and for civil contempt and sanctions against a lawyer representing one of the plaintiff class members. Described in the ruling as "a sad day for the court to hold a member of the bar in civil contempt," the court noted it had no other choice following the attorney's "patter of evasion and lack of candor with this court."

In another products liability Action, this one involving Uniroyal Chemical Company, a trial court sanctioned a party for discovery violations. Invoking Federal Rule 26(a), the case was dismissed for failure to provide the required expert witness reports. In upholding the district court's judgment, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stated that "any sanction short of dismissal would permit the repeatedly recalcitrant appellant to benefit from his tactical obstruction ... [and] in the analogous context of excusable neglect, appellant has not necessarily forfeited his 'day in court' solely by reason of his lawyer's misconduct, when [appellant] has a legal basis to initiate an Action for professional malpractice against his willfully dilatory counsel."

In addition to some judges reestablishing control of their courtrooms by punishing lawyers who file lawsuits deemed frivolous, at least one state attorney general is cracking down on lawyers for filing lawsuits to extort money from small businesses. This month, California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued a Long Beach attorney and his law firm for filing what Lockyer referred to as "sham lawsuits" brought to line the pockets of the lawyer with easy money.