A deposition halted by the sudden departure of the attorney being deposed led to the filing of dueling motions for sanctions in a seven-year old legal-malpractice lawsuit.

The abruptly terminated deposition of Randall Sorrels, managing partner of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Friend in Houston and a nominee for president-elect of the State Bar of Texas, occurred Feb. 8. It showed up on YouTube about a month later.

“I think it is an effort to slow down the momentum of my campaign,” Sorrels said.

Lloyd Kelley, the Houston lawyer who was deposing Sorrels, said he had the video of the deposition published on YouTube so that the judge could see it.

“The bottom line is he has no right to behave like that in a deposition,” Kelley said.

The lawsuit, Richard Alan Haase v. Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Friend and Randall Sorrels, pending in the 80th District Court in Harris County, stems from an unsuccessful patent infringement and misappropriation-of-trade-secrets case that the firm had filed on behalf of Haase in 2005 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In a 2-to-1 decision in 2016, the Fourteenth Court of Appeals affirmed a summary judgment favoring the firm but reversed and remanded the part of Haase's suit against Sorrels, finding that the statute of limitations did not bar consideration of those claims.

The Fourteenth Court's majority opinion provides the following facts:

Acting on the advice of his patent counsel, Haase and his company, ClearValue Inc., hired Sorrels and his firm to assert claims against Pearl River Polymers Inc. and four other entities. Abraham Watkins withdrew from the case in August 2006.

Before Abraham Watkins terminated its representation of Haase, testing was done of a compound used in Pearl River products. The compounds were described in patents that Haase and ClearValue held, and Haase alleged that Abraham Watkins had the test results labeled “attorney-client work product.”

When the Pearl River parties discovered during the 2007 trial that Haase had failed to disclose the test results in discovery, they sought sanctions. The federal district court imposed a $2.7 million sanction on Haase and struck his pleadings. In 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed $121,107 in sanctions, reversing the remainder of the sanctions, and remanded the case for a new trial. Although the jury in the 2010 trial found in favor of Haase on his misappropriation of trade secrets and patent infringement claims, the trial court set aside the damages for misappropriation. Both sides appealed to the Federal Circuit, which concluded that the Pearl River parties had not misappropriated a trade secret and that Haase's patent was invalid. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently denied Haase's petition for writ of certiorari.

Haase filed his suit against Abraham Watkins pro se in March 2011, asserting that the firm was responsible for the conduct that caused him to be sanctioned in the underlying suit.

According to a transcript, Houston attorney Gordon Waggett, Haase's attorney throughout the patent litigation in federal court, testified March 29. 2007, during the trial of ClearValue v. Pearl River: “I take full responsibility for the designation of that (the test results) as work product and I see now that was wrong.”

As noted in the Federal Circuit's March 24, 2009, opinion in ClearValue v. Pearl River, Waggett is the only attorney who saw the test results and therefore was the only attorney who could have prepared the privilege log and make the decision to withhold the test results.

Fast forward to 2018. By this time, the State Bar board had nominated Sorrels as a candidate in the race for president-elect in which he faces Dallas attorney Lisa Blue.

Kelley, who said he began representing Haase after the Fourteenth Court remanded the suit to the state district court, repeatedly questioned Sorrels during the Feb. 8 deposition about documents related to the underlying patent case and his firm's malpractice insurance. Sorrels, who was representing himself, testified that he did not have any documents and had turned over the case file to Haase after his firm stopped representing him. But Kelley contended that Sorrels had attached documents from the patent case to the summary judgment motions.

“The surprising question to you, is where did you get those documents to attach to a summary judgment. You want to help me with that one,” Kelley asked Sorrels.

Sorrels accused Kelley of harassing him. “Okay, deposition is over,” Sorrels said shortly before walking out of the room.

Kelley can be heard saying, “Call the judge. I'm not ending this depo, and I'm staying on the record.”

On March 4, Haase filed a motion for sanctions against Sorrels for “Lying During Deposition, Walking Out and Discovery Abuse.”

“He was caught lying about documents,” Kelley said.

However, Sorrels said he did not receive a request from Kelley about the insurance until Feb. 8, after the deposition was over. Documents attached to the summary judgment motions were case and court opinions, his own affidavit regarding the authenticity of the documents and “my fee agreement, which we copied from Haase's petition,” he said.

On March 15, Sorrels filed motions for sanctions and a protective order in which he described Haase as “a serial litigant” who has been involved in 29 lawsuits and alleged that Kelley had been looking for “ways to seek revenge” because he was sued successfully by two brothers represented by Abraham Watkins in 2006 for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and violations of the state's disciplinary rules.

“This case ain't about me,” Kelley said.

One of the issues in this case is whether Sorrels violated Rule 199.5(g) of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure when he ended the deposition and left the room. Under that rule, a witness who believes a deposition is being conducted in violation of the civil procedure rules can suspend the deposition for the time necessary to obtain a ruling from the court.

Paul Gold, a partner in Aversano & Gold, declined to talk about Sorrels' actions during the deposition. However, Gold said that if the attorney conducting the deposition is “messing with the witness,” the attorney for the witness can instruct the client not to answer questions. If the harassing questions continue, the attorney for the witness can suspend the deposition and promptly file a motion for protection with the court.

“The idea of calling the judge during the deposition really isn't a solution,” Gold said.

In this case, Sorrels represented himself and filed for a protective order more than a month after the deposition.