No. 4-443 / 03-1600.Court of Appeals of Iowa.
July 28, 2004.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Warren County, Artis Reis, Judge.
Jeanie Kloberdanz appeals from the order imposing a monetary sanction on her attorney in connection with filings made in her action to modify the decree dissolving her marriage. REVERSED.
Patricia Wengert of Roehrick, Krull Blumberg, P.C., Des Moines, for appellant.
Pamela Vandel, Des Moines, for appellee.
Ryan Ellis, Indianola, for child.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Hecht and Vaitheswaran, JJ.
HECHT, J.
Jeanie Kloberdanz appeals from an order imposing a monetary sanction on her attorney in connection with filings made in an action to modify a dissolution decree. We reverse.
Factual and Procedural Background.
The marriage of Jeanie and Neal Kloberdanz was dissolved on April 6, 1995. The dissolution decree granted the parties joint custody of their son, Nathan. The decree awarded Nathan’s physical care to Neal and established a schedule for Jeanie’s weekend, holiday, and summer visitation. A dispute subsequently arose between the parties with regard to visitation, and in September of 2002 Jeanie sought modification of the physical care, visitation and child support provisions of the decree.
The modification proceedings were in this case, as they often are, contentious. Jeanie sought a contempt order against Neal for failure to comply with the visitation schedule. Neal filed motions to compel Jeanie to respond to discovery requests. Neal unsuccessfully sought to disqualify Jeanie’s counsel and applied for leave to file an interlocutory appeal. Several other motions were filed and contested by the parties including requests for an examination of Nathan by a psychologist, for the appointment of a guardian ad litem for Nathan, for the assignment of a trial judge to preside in the case, and for sanctions against Jeanie’s counsel. The record suggests that the vitriol which characterized the relationship between the parties soon infected counsel and diminished their willingness or ability to communicate effectively with each other.
On April 8, 2003, Jeanie filed a motion for leave to amend her petition. In her proposed amendment, Jeanie alleged that it was not in Nathan’s best interest to proceed with a contested custody trial, abandoned her request for Nathan’s physical care, prayed for a permanent visitation schedule, and withdrew her request for an order holding Neal in contempt. Neal resisted this motion as well, notwithstanding Jeanie’s clearly expressed attempt to narrow the issues remaining for trial, which after several continuances was scheduled for May 15, 2003. Moreover, as indicated in his resistance to Jeanie’s motion for leave to amend the petition, Neal maintained his position that trial must be held on issues pertaining to sanctions, visitation, and contempt notwithstanding the proposed amendment.
In a letter to Neal’s counsel on April 29, 2003, Jeanie’s counsel suggested she would be dismissing “this cause of action” at Jeanie’s request.[1] The trial date was fast approaching, however, and Jeanie’s counsel filed a motion for continuance on May 8, 2003. The parties subsequently reached an agreement pursuant to which Jeanie’s parental rights were terminated.
A hearing on Neal’s request for sanctions against Jeanie’s counsel was held on July 15, 2003. On August 29, 2003, the district court concluded Jeanie’s counsel violated Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 1.413(1) when she filed four documents[2] in the litigation. The court entered an order imposing sanctions against Jeanie’s counsel in the amount of $1,800. Jeanie appeals, contesting only the imposition of sanctions against her attorney.
Scope and Standards of Review.
A custody modification proceeding is tried in equity and reviewed de novo. In re Marriage of Wersinger, 577 N.W.2d 866, 868 (Iowa Ct.App. 1998). Our review of the sanction issue is for abuse of discretion. Schettler v. Iowa Dist. Ct., 509 N.W.2d 459, 464 (Iowa 1993) (addressing the former rule 80(a)); Weigel v. Weigel, 467 N.W.2d 277, 280 (Iowa 1991) (determining that appellate courts should review all aspects of a district court’s imposition of sanctions, including conclusions of law, under a deferential standard). “We find an abuse when the district court exercises its discretion on grounds or for reasons clearly untenable or to an extent clearly unreasonable.” Schettler, 509 N.W.2d at 464. “Unreasonable” in this context means not based on substantial evidence. Id.
Discussion.
Rule 1.413(1) provides in relevant part:
Counsel’s signature to every motion, pleading, or other paper shall be deemed a certificate that: counsel has read the motion, pleading, or other paper; that to the best of counsel’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after reasonable inquiry, it 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, such as to harass or cause an unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation. If a motion, pleading, or other paper is signed in violation of this rule, the court, upon motion or upon its own initiative, shall impose upon the person who signed it, a representative party, or both, an appropriate sanction, which may include an order to pay the other party or parties the amount of the reasonable expenses incurred because of the filing of the motion, pleading, or other paper, including a reasonable attorney fee.
The focus of the court in the adjudication of claims for sanctions is upon “the reasonableness of [counsel’s] judgment `as of the time the paper in question was filed, not with hindsight gained through hearing the evidence at trial.'” Schettler, 509 N.W.2d at 466 (quoting Weigel, 467 N.W.2d at 280). Moreover, “the conduct of counsel is measured by an objective, not a subjective, standard.” Weigel, 476 N.W.2d at 281. The reasonableness of counsel’s inquiry into the law and facts depends on numerous factors including, but not limited to, the time available for investigation, whether counsel had to rely on her client for information, and whether counsel’s conduct was based upon a plausible view of the law. Id. at 280.
With the foregoing principles in mind, we proceed to an analysis of the district court’s ruling. In its ruling on the sanction issue, the district court observed that:
[t]he entire course of these proceedings is disturbing to the Court. From September 2002 until June 2003, this child was placed in the middle of expensive and contentious litigation, which in hindsight seems altogether frivolous to this Court.
While we certainly concur with the district court’s observation that this litigation was expensive and contentious, such attributes do not in themselves justify sanctions or distinguish this case from others in which sanctions justifiably are not imposed. Moreover, although sanction determinations by definition require the court to assess earlier conduct of counsel, “hindsight” must be cautiously employed in this context because the reasonableness of counsel’s judgment must be measured as of the time the papers in question were filed. See Weigel, 467 N.W.2d at 280.
We are unable to discern from the district court’s order why it concluded rule 1.413(1) was violated in this case. In particular, the ruling does not specify whether the court concluded counsel filed the four documents without knowledge or belief after reasonable inquiry that they were grounded in fact and warranted by existing law or a good faith argument for its extension, modification, or reversal; or whether the court concluded the documents were filed for an improper purpose. In any case, after a careful review of the record, we find no sufficient support for either of these hypothetical rationales. Indeed, we conclude each of the four documents was supported by plausible purposes consistent with rule 1.413(1). We will discuss the documents in the order in which they were filed.
Jeanie’s counsel asserts she believed the appointment of a single judge to hear all pretrial matters and the trial was the most efficient means of resolving this particularly contentious family matter. Whether or not the local practice in the judicial district customarily permitted the special assignment of this type of case to a judge, Jeanie’s motion urging that such an assignment be ordered in this case did not violate the letter or the spirit of rule 1.413(1). Likewise, Jeanie’s brief response to Neal’s resistance on this issue sets forth a plausible good faith reason for requesting an order directing that all pretrial matters and the trial be heard by a single judge. Thus, we find no support in the record for a sanction based on the filing of these two documents.
As noted above, the proposed amendment attached to the motion for leave to amend filed on April 8, 2003 sought to narrow the issues for trial. Leave was in fact granted and the resulting amendment abandoned Jeanie’s claim for physical care of Nathan and withdrew her contention that Neal should be held in contempt for willful refusal to allow visitation in conformity with the dissolution decree. We find no support in the record for the district court’s conclusion that this motion failed “to pass muster under Rule 1.413(1).” Although Jeanie subsequently dismissed her petition for modification prior to trial and agreed to the termination of her parental rights in order to allow Neal’s current wife to adopt Nathan, counsel’s conduct in the filing of the motion is evaluated as of the time the motion was filed. We find no basis in the record supporting a conclusion that counsel lacked a good faith basis for filing a motion to narrow the issues in this particularly contentious case.
We likewise conclude the district court abused its discretion in holding that the motion for continuance filed on May 8, 2003 violated rule 1.413(1). Although Jeanie’s counsel had, in correspondence dated April 29, 2003, communicated to Neal’s counsel that Jeanie had decided to dismiss her petition for modification, there were substantial unresolved collateral disputes between the parties. In particular, Neal’s claim for sanctions against Jeanie’s counsel was extant, and the possibility that Jeanie’s parental rights might be terminated was yet to be explored and resolved by agreement. Given the substantial changes in the nature and extent of the issues remaining for trial, and the reasonable prospect that some of the remaining issues could be resolved without trial if the case was again continued, we find no factual or legal basis in the record to support the district court’s finding that Jeanie’s motion for continuance violated the rule.
Having found no factual or legal basis in the record to support the sanction imposed on Jeanie’s counsel, we conclude the district court abused its discretion. Accordingly, we reverse.
REVERSED.