Ethics
Suit is ‘almost a word-for-word carbon copy’ of prior complaint filed by different lawyers, federal judge says
A federal judge in Puerto Rico has said she is considering sanctions for a San Juan, Puerto Rico, lawyer who filed a lawsuit that is “almost a word-for-word carbon copy” of a suit filed by different lawyers representing different plaintiffs. (Image from Shutterstock)
Updated: A federal judge in Puerto Rico has said she is considering sanctions for a San Juan, Puerto Rico, lawyer who filed a lawsuit that is “almost a word-for-word carbon copy” of a suit filed by different lawyers representing different plaintiffs.
In an April 9 order, U.S. District Judge Aida M. Delgado-Colon of the District of Puerto Rico found that the conduct by lawyer David Efron “runs afoul not only of attorney Efron’s duty of competence to his client but also his duty of candor to the court.”
Law 360 has the story.
Efron told the ABA Journal that there was no plagiarism because the plaintiffs in both cases are cooperating.
Efron is representing San Juan in a December 2023 suit alleging that activities by several oil-industry defendants caused damages because of their impact on climate change. Delgado-Colon said Efron’s suit and some of his other case filings are similar to documents in a prior suit filed by about 40 other municipalities.
“Just a review of the first couple of paragraphs of the complaint is enough to warrant suspicion,” Delgado-Colon wrote.
The opening language, footnotes and citations are identical to the corresponding paragraphs in the municipalities’ case, with a few exceptions, Delgado-Colon said. They include “sprinkling some adverbs such as ‘incredibly’ at the beginning of a paragraph,” referring to the correct plaintiff and “breaking a paragraph in two.”
As pointed out by the defendants, Efron’s suit was so “rife with examples of plagiarism” that it refers to documents that were never filed, it sometimes refers to the singular plaintiff as “municipalities,” and it repeats typos in the other suit, Delgado-Colon said in her order. Efron also refers to “this class action,” even though San Juan denied bringing such a case, the judge said.
“Attorney Efron lifted not only the entire theory of San Juan’s case from the municipalities’ case but went so far [as] to use virtually the very same words and ideas, usurping the thought processes and legal theories a client hires an attorney to develop and perform,” Delgado-Colon said.
Delgado-Colon said Efron was also late in filing case documents and ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned $7,000 for “untimely filings and lack of diligence in the management of case deadlines.” Efron had said he was in a federal jury trial at the time.
As for the alleged plagiarism, the judge said a monetary sanction on its own would be “insufficient to address the seriousness of the circumstance,” and she would be issuing a separate order to address that issue.
“This opinion and order should serve as a cautionary tale for all members of the bar,” Delgado-Colon wrote.
Efron told the Journal in an email that the judge had “rushed to judgment” without getting the full story.
“There was no plagiarism,” Efron says. The plaintiffs in both cases “are collaborating for the same cause in the interest of controlling climate change. The judge without even conferring with counsel rushed to judgment without knowing that counsel in both cases are collaborating.”
Efron also says the order “is not final and has been referred for further proceedings after we are given an opportunity to respond and show cause.”
Updated April 15 at 11:23 a.m. to add lawyer David Efron’s comments.
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