Trials & Litigation
Boies Schiller sanctioned almost $15K for ‘uniquely eye-opening breakdown in civility’
August 11, 2025, 10:14 am CDT
Boies Schiller Flexner should pay $14,866 for disobeying court docket orders to cooperate with an opposing counsel on joint case filings, a federal decide in San Francisco dominated final week. (Picture from Shutterstock)
Boies Schiller Flexner should pay $14,866 for disobeying court docket orders to cooperate with an opposing counsel on joint case filings, a federal decide in San Francisco dominated final week.
The movement for sanctions by litigation opponent Levi Strauss & Co. “stems from a uniquely eye-opening breakdown in civility and professionalism, requiring this federal court docket to imagine the position of a upset faculty principal,” stated U.S. District Choose Trina L. Thompson of the Northern District of California in an Aug. 7 order.
Thompson stated Boies Schiller’s conduct has led her “to contemplate instituting a brand new standing order on civility and professionalism to make sure such conduct doesn’t occur once more.”
Boies Schiller represented plaintiff Julia Bois, who claimed that Levi Strauss & Co. denied her a promotion due to her being pregnant, Law360 experiences in its protection of Thompson’s order. Federal jurors dominated towards Bois in Might.
Thompson imposed sanctions on Boies Schiller for failing to satisfy and talk to its opponent on jury directions and a verdict type and for submitting its pretrial assertion and proposed assertion of the case. The actions constituted “deliberate disobedience” of court docket orders, Thompson concluded.
Thompson didn’t discover, nevertheless, that the conduct was for the aim of harassing Boies Schiller’s opponent or that the conduct was frivolous or for an improper objective.
Boies Schiller argued that it submitted its filings as a result of it couldn’t attain an settlement with Levi Strauss & Co. attorneys from Paul Hastings.
Boies Schiller’s argument “is unpersuasive,” Thompson stated. “The events are lots able to submitting joint filings that distill their disagreements for the court docket to deal with.”
Thompson criticized Boies Schiller for its response to the sanctions movement, which “spends 10 pages excruciatingly detailing each communication exchanged between the events’ counsel and finger-pointing away all accountability of [its] violations onto the defendant.”
“The first takeaway from this dissertation,” Thompson stated, is that Boies Schiller concedes that its unilateral filings violated court docket orders however argues that every violation is in truth the fault of Levi Strauss attorneys.
“Alarmingly,” Thompson stated, Boies Schiller frames the “violations as zealous advocacy.”
The 2 Boies Schiller companions on the case, Joshua Schiller and Benjamin Margulis, didn’t instantly reply to an ABA Journal electronic mail looking for remark. Nor did they instantly reply to a message left with the legislation agency.
Paul Hastings companion Cameron W. Fox, who represented Levi Strauss & Co., didn’t instantly reply to the Journal’s electronic mail request for remark.
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