COA affirms sanctions for lawyer’s misrepresentation of invoices

Jennifer Nelson for www.theindaianalawyer.com

The Indiana Court of Appeals called out an attorney for the errors in her appellate brief and considered requiring her to prove she attended continuing legal education on appellate practice before filing anything else before the appeals court.

Eric Brazier filed a lawsuit against Maple Lane Apartments I LLC, claiming that the company owed him more than $63,000 for painting services he completed at the apartment complex. Brazier was authorized by Sue Papaj, Maple Lane’s property manager, to perform some painting projects, but after she informed him the company no longer would use his services, he submitted invoices claiming to have performed work on every building in the complex. Brazier’s practice was to submit invoices with the date he created the invoice, not when the work was done.

Maple Lane did not pay him for the work because it believed he had not performed it nor did they authorize it. Brazier sued, but lost his claim, with the trial court imposing sanctions against his attorney for misrepresenting evidence. The invoices Brazier and his attorney, Kristin R. Fox, originally said were copies of those submitted to Maple Leaf were actually created by Brazier in preparation of this lawsuit after meeting with Fox. The trial court ordered Brazier to pay $5,000 in attorney fees to Maple Leaf.

The COA affirmed in Eric Brazier d/b/a Brazier Painting v. Maple Lane Apartments I, LLC, 71A04-1406-CC-278, because Brazier’s attorney signed numerous pleadings and motions asserting the authenticity of the invoices of copies and knowingly misrepresented or failed to correct any misrepresentations of the evidence. Brazier testified at trial that he created the invoices after meeting with Fox.

The appellate judges had issues with Brazier’s corrected appellate brief, which Fox said was going to address page numbers and citations. But what was filed was “at best, an abject failure to understand the most basic requirements of appellate briefing” and “(a)t worst, (was) a blatant attempt to make additional argument without complying with the page and word limitations of a brief,” Judge Margret Robb wrote.

The table of authorities also failed to inform the court of the cases cited in the brief.

In a lengthy footnote, Robb wrote, “Counsel’s failures to follow even the simplest rules regarding the content of an appellate brief have made our review of this case unnecessarily difficult. We commend Maple Lane for largely refraining from comment on the quality of the brief and endeavoring to respond to the legal arguments. Were it within our purview to do so, we would order Brazier’s counsel to verify to this court her attendance at a continuing legal education program regarding appellate practice before submitting any further briefs to this court. Although it would be within our purview to order counsel to show cause why she should not be held in contempt for willful violation of this court’s order granting leave to amend the brief to correct technical errors only and specifically prohibiting any substantive changes, counsel does not appear to frequently represent clients on appeal nor has she been previously cited for poor briefing practices. Therefore, we have chosen not to take such extreme measures at this juncture. Nonetheless, we admonish counsel in the strongest possible terms to carefully review the appellate rules and fully conform her briefs to their requirements in the future.”