## Facts

- Leisa Young, as administratrix of Cornel Young, Jr.’s estate, filed a civil rights and state-law action arising from the shooting death of Cornel Young, Jr., an off-duty Black police officer, by two on-duty white Providence officers during a nighttime disturbance.
- The suit named the City of Providence, police leadership, and individual officers, and pursued multiple theories of liability, including supervisory and municipal liability tied to alleged hiring and training failures.
- During the federal litigation, the district court concluded that three attorneys representing Young—Barry C. Scheck and Nicholas Brustin (admitted pro hac vice) and Robert B. Mann (local counsel)—violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11.
- The district court’s sanctions were based primarily on a memorandum filed by counsel that the court viewed as misstating the record and mischaracterizing prior court rulings.
- As sanctions, the district court revoked Scheck’s and Brustin’s pro hac vice admissions and formally censured Scheck.
- The sanctioned attorneys appealed the sanctions order to the First Circuit; the appeal concerned Rule 11 sanctions rather than the merits of the underlying civil rights claims.

## Issues

1. Whether a court may impose Rule 11 sanctions on a court-initiated basis without finding the attorney acted in subjective bad faith.
2. Whether the challenged memorandum contained false, misleading, or unsupported factual or legal assertions sufficient to justify Rule 11 sanctions under an objective standard.

## Decision

- The First Circuit vacated the sanctions order and set aside the Rule 11 violations as to all three attorneys.
- The court agreed that subjective bad faith is not a prerequisite to Rule 11 sanctions, including when the court initiates the inquiry.
- The court held that sanctions were unwarranted on this record because the memorandum did not seek to mislead the court and none of its statements were false.
- The court treated the disputed statements as permissible argumentative characterizations in the context of complex, contested civil rights litigation, not sanctionable misrepresentations.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 11 permits sanctions when a filing, judged by objective reasonableness under the circumstances, is presented for an improper purpose, advances frivolous legal contentions, or asserts factual contentions without evidentiary support (or a reasonable expectation of such support after investigation).
- Court-initiated Rule 11 proceedings do not require proof of the attorney’s subjective bad faith, but they still require conduct that satisfies Rule 11’s substantive standards.
- Rule 11 is not a general mechanism to punish vigorous advocacy or reasonable disputes about how the record and prior rulings should be characterized; strong rhetoric or debatable phrasing, without materially false or misleading statements, does not justify sanctions.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit vacated the district court’s Rule 11 sanctions, holding that although bad faith is not required for court-initiated sanctions, the memorandum at issue was not objectively false or misleading and reflected permissible advocacy in a complex civil rights case.


Young v. City of Providence ex rel. Napolitano, 404 F.3d 33 (1st Cir. 2005)