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Lt. Pedro J. Lamboy-Ortiz; Sgt. Roberto Figueroa-Montalvo; et al v. Miguel G. Ortiz-Velez, In His Official Capacity As Mayor of the Municipality of Sabana Grande

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Before Torruella, Lipez, and Howard, Circuit Judges.

This appeal involves an award of close to $130,000 in attorney’s fees against unsuccessful civil rights plaintiffs and over $60,000 in sanctions against plaintiffs’ counsel personally. Plaintiffs, who survived various dispositive motions and proceeded to a jury trial on their claims, argue that their lawsuit was not so unfounded or unreasonable as to justify an award of fees to the defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. We agree and therefore vacate the fee award.

We conclude, however, that the district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing sanctions on plaintiffs’ counsel, whose vexatious conduct and manifest disrespect of the district court proceedings stand out even in the dry pages of the record on appeal. Still, the amount of the sanction far exceeds what could be justified in the name of deterrence. We therefore reduce the sanction to $5,000.

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