Legal Fee Tracker: Sanctions pile up for Texas patent lawyer
By David Thomas
Aug 22 (Reuters) -A Houston-based patent lawyer who has filed more than 100 lawsuits this year alone is on the hook for Volkswagen's legal bills after a federal judge dismissed his client's lawsuit against the German automaker, marking the latest in a series of sanctions against him or his clients for litigation misconduct.
William Ramey and his client VDPP were ordered last week to pay $207,000 in legal fees for their dismissed case claiming Volkswagen's 2020 backup camera system infringed a VDPP patent.
VDPP's case was "frivolous" and riddled with errors, the federal judge in Houston found last week.
"VDPP’s misconduct infected the entire litigation," U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal wrote in an Aug. 13 ruling, calling the lawsuit "a case that never should have been filed."
Rosenthal said Ramey himself was jointly liable, after noting in an earlier decision that "this is not the first time" a judge found the lawyer had brought a case warranting sanctions.
Ramey, whose law firm Ramey LLP has filed at least 25 lawsuits on VDPP's behalf this year, said in an email that he and his client "respect all court orders. We appeal those orders we think are incorrect, as we have done in this case."
A Volkswagen spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Volkswagen was represented in the case by lawyers from Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, an intellectual property-focused law firm, and Houston-based Trent & Taylor. Lawyers for those firms did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rosenthal said Volkswagen's lawyers worked 256 hours on the case, charging between $600 and $979 an hour.
Federal judges in Texas and other states have issued fee sanctions in cases brought by Ramey at least seven times in four years, adding up to at least $810,000, according to a review by Reuters.
More than $250,000 of those fees are owed in cases Ramey brought against Google.
A federal judge in San Francisco ordered Ramey's client, EscapeX IP, to pay more than $191,000 to Google in August 2023 after finding it filed a frivolous lawsuit against the tech giant's YouTube unit in hopes of extracting a small settlement.
The same judge later hit EscapeX with more sanctions in February, ordering the company to pay more than $65,000 in legal fees to Google. EscapeX has appealed the fee awards in the Google case and others.
Microsoft has also asked for sanctions against Ramey and his law firm after his former client unsuccessfully sued the company in Waco, Texas, federal court for violating its patents with its Azure and Security systems.
Microsoft accused the Ramey firm of seeking "quick, nuisance-value settlements" on behalf of clients that are just shell companies with little to no assets. Any settlement money the firm receives is distributed to the firm and its litigation funders, Microsoft said.
Ramey has filed a dueling sanctions request against the company, as well as its lawyer from White & Case and the in-house counsel of his former client in the Microsoft case, CTD Networks. Ramey said Microsoft relied on "patently false" information in its sanctions bid, and he defended his conduct in the CTD litigation and other patent cases.
U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez has yet to rule on the competing motions. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment. White & Case partner Jonathan Lamberson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Legal Fee Tracker is a weekly feature exploring attorney compensation awards and disputes in class actions, bankruptcies and other matters. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com.)
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