Credit: Lightspring/Shutterstock.com.

Failing to recognize that her client wasn't eligible under the Family and Medical Leave Act may have been an “honest mistake,” but not dropping the case as soon as the mistake was discovered has cost a Pittsburgh attorney nearly $5,000 in sanctions.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon of the Western District of Pennsylvania recently ordered Kraemer, Manes & Associates attorney Christi Wallace to pay $4,900 in attorney fees to compensate defendants for having to pursue the FMLA claim Wallace filed on behalf of plaintiff Christopher Deming-Archambault.

Although Wallace contended that failing to realize her client was a few weeks shy of meeting the 12-month employment requirement to be eligible for FMLA protections was “an honest mistake,” Bissoon said failing to notify the court and allowing the case to continue for more than a month constituted bad faith.

“Plaintiff's counsel failed to examine her client's FMLA eligibility at the time she filed the complaint—even to a cursory degree—and then failed to take timely action on the docket once it was clear to her that her claim was legally invalid,” Bissoon said. “This must constitute bad faith, and the court will invoke its inherent authority to sanction plaintiff's counsel for this conduct.”

The decision in Deming-Archambault v. Lennox International was issued April 20.

According to Bissoon, Deming-Archambault sued his former employer, Lennox International, in December 2017, claiming the company retaliated against him for taking leave by putting him on a performance improvement plan and downgrading his sales territory, which “set him up to fail” and triggered his decision to quit the job. According to the complaint, Deming-Archambault started working at Lennox International in January 2016, and took leave in December of that year.

On Feb. 20, 2018, the company filed an answer saying that Deming-Archambault was not an eligible employee under the FMLA because he had not been employed for at least 12 months before taking leave.

The court set a deadline to respond in mid-March, but Wallace did not meet the deadline, and instead notified a court deputy clerk a few days later that she planned to ask the court to grant the defendant's motion's for judgment on the pleadings.

In late March, the defendants filed the sanctions motion, saying that, instead of withdrawing the claims, Deming-Archambault's counsel acted in bad faith by “coercively threatening and then pursuing other meritless claims.”

Wallace denied those claims, saying she simply made a mistake and had been preparing to file a stipulation of dismissal. She further argued that it was defense counsel who attempted “to coerce” a settlement in the case.

Bissoon said Wallace did not notify the court about the plans to dismiss, or amend the case until April 6, which left Bissoon to conclude that “counsel's conduct amounted to stalling the litigation for an improper reason.”

“To be clear, counsel's initial failure to calculate whether her client had worked for 12 months was reckless, and recklessness alone is insufficient for a finding of bad faith,” Bissoon said. “However, counsel compounded her reckless mistake through her subsequent conduct.”

Bissoon's sanctions award is significantly lower than the $21,462 that defense counsel requested.

Neither Wallace, nor Jones Day attorney James Urban, who is representing Lennox, returned a call for comment Friday.