VexAItious Litigants (Update: Birtherism)
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This reads like the High Council of Dwarrows is about to sentence someone to being fed to a balrog. Unfortunately the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit doesn’t have a balrog, so it had to settle for fining the two attorneys really hard.
We wholeheartedly agree. Irion and Egli breached the trust that we must have in the lawyers appearing before us. They have brought the profession into disrepute. Irion’s and Egli’s failure to comply with the basic rules of our profession has forced us and the City to unnecessarily expend time and resources on a case that should have been litigated and resolved straightforwardly but was not. More importantly, by breaching our trust, we can no longer rely on the representations in Irion’s and Egli’s briefs, harming both their clients (whose cases are now viewed with skepticism) and this court (who must now independently verify everything Irion and Egli write). Finally, Irion and Egli have sullied the reputation of our bar, which now must litigate under the cloud of their conduct. We therefore issue these sanctions to Irion and Egli, the rationales for which we will explain below:
But if the Court had a balrog, those guys would be in big trouble.
It looks like Russell Egli was been censured by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2017 and 2016. Van Irion was sanctioned last year.
The original case stems from the plaintiff’ gate-crashing an event for employees of Athens, Tenn. and their families.
The lawsuits stem from a 2022 incident, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Glenn Whiting showed up to an Independence Day fireworks show held by the City of Athens. The lawsuit states that the City only allowed its employees and families to attend, but Whiting showed up to protest.
The lawsuit states that Whiting began taking video of children at the event, despite City employees asking him to stop, and saying he would be removed if he continued.
Seems like a perfect pairing of attorneys and client.
Update: Thanks to commentarion Aexia for pointing out Irion’s history as a birther. He got sanctioned for that too.
