Too often in litigation, clients insist that their lawyers take no prisoners, and lawyers are made to fear risk of termination if they discourage their clients from demanding a too-aggressive approach. Sufficient concern over this phenomenon encouraged the authors of the rules of conduct regulating lawyers to seek to address the problem in black letter form.
No question, often the client, particularly if he or she is a sophisticated consumer of legal services, is the moving force in unnecessarily aggressive litigation or litigation tactics. When a judge sees that, she may take the unusual step of sanctioning the client directly – likely, along with the lawyer who is, by necessity, the “faceman,” so to speak. Such sanctions are usually monetary, requiring payment of the adverse party’s legal fees in having to address in court the offending party’s frivolous tactic. Sometimes, judges get so fed up that they actually strike a pleading or dismiss the case or defense altogether. It can happen!
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