It's not often that David Boies gets his hand slapped in court, so a story on Tuesday by my colleague Raychel Lean in the Daily Business Review caught my eye: Boies Schiller Client Hit With Sanctions Over Dismissed Billion-Dollar Suit.

I'm the first to admit I love a good sanctions smack-down. Litigators and clients behaving badly deserve to be shamed.

For example, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in late 2016 won sanctions when firm lawyers proved a key document in a $12 billion fight was a clever forgery. (Well done team!)

Or there was the time when nonpracticing entity Rembrandt Technologies LP was hit with sanctions by a Delaware judge who found widespread document spoliation, unethical payments to witnesses and fraudulent revival of patents. (Sock it to 'em!)

Of course, more often the misconduct is less dramatic but still unacceptable. For example, a federal judge in Texas found Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom client ZeniMax failed to produce documents in response to two specific orders (though the judge said he didn't think it was Skadden's fault).

All of which made me curious to see what a litigator as esteemed as David Boies might have done wrong.

The answer? As far as I can tell, not really anything. Still, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles last week ruled that Boies's client is on the hook for opposing counsel's legal fees that may top $275,000.

In reading the order recommending sanctions, I'm honestly at a loss to see what Boies could or should have done differently—other than not bringing the case in the first place.

And maybe he wishes he hadn't. I suspect it must have been maddening to litigate.

The Boies Schiller chairman led a team representing PDVSA Litigation Trust, which was formed to pursue claims on behalf of Venezuelan state-owned energy company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.

In March of 2018, Boies and partners Steven Davis, Stephen Zack, Nicholas Gravante Jr. and George F. Carpinello filed a 161-page complaint on behalf of the trust in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

They alleged a major, ongoing conspiracy among international oil companies and traders, their banks and co-conspirators to cheat PDVSA out of billions of dollars.

Among the allegations—that the conspirators fixed prices and rigged bids in the purchase and sale of PDVSA's crude oil and hydrocarbon products; stole its data and intellectual property; excluded legitimate competitors, bribed PDVSA agents, and more—19 counts in all. In exhibits filed with the complaint, the plaintiffs provided 100 pages of emails, payment records and other evidence to back up their claims.

It was shaping up to be a big fight.

According to the docket report, opposing counsel included Paul Weiss for Glencore Ltd. (with firm chairman Brad Karp among the counsel of record); Mayer Brown and Reed Smith for Lukoil Pan Americas; Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan for Trafigura Trading; Holland & Knight for Helsinge Holdings; Susman Godfrey for Vitol Energy; Carlton Fields Jorden Burt for Colonial Oil Industries Inc. and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld for an individual defendant.

It would have been epic to watch them all battle. But they never got close to the merits of the case.

The suit failed to launch for an utterly prosaic reason: U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes found the trust lacked standing because the Venezuelan officials who signed it weren't available to authenticate their signatures, because, well, Venezuela is a mess.

The Boies Schiller team offered a handwriting expert, but no dice. Otazo-Reyes rejected the expert's testimony as “contrived, equivocal, evasive and, frankly, non-scientific.”

In addition to being unable to verify the signatures, Otazo-Reyes also found that the defendants were wrongly precluded from exploring standing-related questions because they couldn't depose the signatories.

“Plaintiff has failed to carry its burden of proving the admissibility of the Trust Agreement upon which it relies to establish its Article lll standing,” she wrote in a recommendation that was adopted by the judge.

Case dismissed.

Harsh, yes, but certainly not beyond the pale.

It was her follow-up recommendation for sanctions that strikes me as off base.

The magistrate judge dinged Boies for failing to produce the Venezuela witnesses. But it wasn't simply that they didn't want to show up. One of the officials who signed the trust was arrested and is in prison in Venezuela. Two other key witnesses have been barred from leaving the country by President Nicolás Maduro. One can't be located.

Boies suggested doing video conference depositions with the two officials who couldn't travel. The defense said no, insisting this wasn't allowed because Venezuela didn't sign the portion of the Hague convention covering voluntary depositions of its citizens.

Right.

Boies suggested doing depositions in writing. No way, the defense said.

In recommending sanctions, Otazo-Reyes quotes transcripts where Boies promised to have the officials available to be deposed, only to cancel at the last minute.

But it was hardly his fault.

“At the aftermath of the [May 20, 2018] elections down in Venezuela and other political events, people were told, high officials in Venezuela were told that they could not travel to the United States,” Boies said on May 29, 2018. As a result, a deposition scheduled to take place in New York the following day had to be cancelled.

But Boies said one official could still travel to Spain, and offered to do a deposition there a week later. Except then the official was forbidden at the last minute by Maduro to go to Spain.

Again, how is this the plaintiffs' fault?

Otazo-Reyes declined to address the plaintiffs' argument that the circumstances were beyond their control.

Instead, she flatly concluded that “Plaintiff was obligated to produce discovery from PDVSA and the Venezuelan officials who allegedly authorized the trust to support its position,” she wrote. “As such, reasonable people could not differ as to the inappropriateness of the trust's unilateral cancellation of these court-ordered depositions. Therefore, the trust's discovery sanctions are warranted.”

Wait, excuse me? I'm a reasonable person. And yes, I do disagree.

Indeed, this is a decision that feels less about the merits of the case, and more about bias against anything that might aid the current (and legitimately awful) government of Venezuela. I get that.

But that doesn't mean other industry players should get a free pass for any alleged wrongdoing—and their legal bills paid to boot.