Justia U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The United States appealed an award of attorney's fees and costs under the Hyde Amendment, Pub. L. No. 105-119, section 617, 111 Stat. 2440, 2519, and two attorneys, Sean Cronin and Andrea Hoffman, appeal public reprimands entered against them based on their work as Assistant United States Attorneys in an underlying criminal action marked by hard adversarial tactics. The court held that the district court abused its discretion when it imposed sanctions against the United States for a prosecution that was objectively reasonable, and the district court violated the constitutional right to due process of the two lead prosecutors, when it denied them notice of any charges of misconduct and an opportunity to be heard. Therefore, the court vacated the award of attorney's fees and costs against the United States and the public reprimand of Cronin and Hoffman, but the court denied the request of Cronin and Hoffman that the court reassign the case to a different district judge at this stage.

Plaintiff filed a declaratory judgment action against its insurer to determine whether its professional liability policy issued to plaintiff provided coverage for plaintiff's erroneous disbursement of client funds from its trust account. At issue was whether the district court properly granted the insurer's motion for summary judgment denying coverage where the district found no coverage under the policy. The court held that plaintiff's erroneous transfer of its clients' trust funds to a third party was an act or omission in the conduct of its professional fiduciary duties to its clients that would give rise to a claim of negligence against it by those clients and for which it would have been liable for damages. Such a claim for a negligent act or omission was covered by the plain terms of the policy issued by the insurer to plaintiff. Accordingly, the entry of summary judgment for insurer was reversed and the case remanded for entry of summary judgment for plaintiff. The district court's award of costs against plaintiff was also reversed.