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Ethics

2 Irell & Manella lawyers should be sanctioned after witness ‘was tricked’ with altered document, special master says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 20, 2025, 3:02 pm CDT

An Irell & Manella associate who decided to alter a date on a schematic drawing to prove a point during a deposition should be sanctioned, along with a partner who missed an email revealing the plan, a special master has recommended.

The associate, Benjamin Manzin-Monnin, came up with the idea to show that such dates can be unreliable, according to the March 18 opinion by special master David Folsom. Manzin-Monnin questioned a witness about the document before revealing that it had been altered.

Law360 has the story.

Folsom noted that all lawyers from Irell & Manella attend in-house ethics seminars. Folson said Manzin-Monnin should be required to attend 30 additional hours of ethics courses, along with the partner he notified in an email chain, Jason Sheasby.

Folsom also recommended that Irell & Manella pay fees and costs incurred by the special master and defendant Samsung Electronics in connection with the sanctions motion. And he said Irell & Manella’s client, CogniPower, should lose an hour of trial time in its patent infringement case, filed against Samsung Electronics in federal court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The deposition witness was an executive at a company that, according to Samsung Electronics, had an invention that predates CogniPower’s patents, Law360 explains.

A law firm employee had advised Manzin-Monnin in September 2024 to “get clear directions” from a senior attorney regarding the “mocked up dates on evidence floating around.” Manzin-Monnin replied that he had emailed “Jason,” an apparent reference to Sheasby.

But Sheasby said he “missed” the email from Manzin-Monnin while acknowledging that it was his responsibility to read it.

In a declaration, Sheasby said during the deposition, Manzin-Monnin had shown the expert witness “the correct document, then later the altered version, and then immediately the correct and altered side by side, and then told the witness he altered on[e] of the documents.”

The witness “was tricked” and “obviously confused” by questions about the altered date, Folsom said in the opinion. The fact that Manzin-Monnin did not mark the altered document as an exhibit during the deposition “is immaterial,” Folsom said.

Sheasby said in the declaration Manzin-Monnin has been subject to “professional strictures” as a result of his behavior. In addition, the firm’s general counsel had scheduled a mandatory March 19 ethics seminar for all the firm’s attorneys to address the events and to “ensure that nothing of this nature happens again.”

Neither Manzin-Monnin nor Sheasby immediately responded to the ABA Journal’s email request for comment. Nor did a firm spokesperson immediately reply to a Journal email.

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Law Firms

BigLaw firm sanctioned for ‘flagrant violations of a protective order’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 4, 2024, 2:36 pm CST

Latham & Watkins and its client must pay an attorney-fee sanction for “flagrant violations of a protective order,” according to a federal judge in California.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Central District of California ordered Latham and its then-client, former Banc of California CEO Steven A. Sugarman, to pay attorney fees incurred by investment company Muddy Waters Capital in a motion for sanctions, report Reuters and Law 360.

In a Sept. 30 order unsealed last Tuesday, Gee said Latham wrongly gave Sugarman an expert-witness report that relied on documents produced by Muddy Waters Capital that had been designated for “attorneys’ eyes only.” Sugarman then wrongly shared the report with others in a bid to implicate Muddy Waters Capital in a bid to devalue Banc of California stock, Gee concluded. Latham had designated the report as “confidential,” rather than for “attorneys’ eyes only.”

The underlying litigation was a securities class action lawsuit by investors who alleged a failure to disclose harmful information that led to a decrease in stock price. The information, revealed in an anonymous blog post, consisted of allegations that Banc of California had ties to a fraudster.

Sugarman subpoenaed Muddy Waters Capital based on his belief that it may have been among market participants who were aware of the blog post in advance because they had short positions that would benefit from a decrease in stock price. Muddy Waters Capital produced documents about its Banc of California transactions in response to an order saying the material would be for attorneys’ eyes only.

The report that relied on the attorneys-eyes-only information was prepared by a professor who was asked to provide an opinion on why the bank’s stock price decreased. He concluded that traders engaged in a “short-and-distort” trading scheme.

Sugarman said he didn’t think that the expert report contained information for attorneys’ eyes only, and it was his confidential document. He said he didn’t recall authorizing an employee to disseminate it. Gee nonetheless found Sugarman in civil contempt, saying his conduct “was not based on a good faith and reasonable interpretation of the protective order.”

Latham claimed that the expert report did not include information derived from attorneys-eyes-only material, but that argument “is obviously wrong,” Gee said. The law firm alternatively argued that civil contempt wasn’t warranted for “a technical error during a yearslong, incredibly complex litigation requiring near-daily application of the protective order.”

“This argument,” Gee said, “undermines the critical importance of complying with protective orders in civil litigation—and minimizes the degree of care that must be exercised in ensuring compliance.”

Gee acknowledged, however, that “there is insufficient evidence to suggest that Latham acted in bad faith as opposed to in serious error.”

A Latham spokesperson declined to comment to the ABA Journal. A lawyer for Sugarman, Mona Hanna of Michelman & Robinson, did not immediately respond to the Journal’s emailed request for comment.