A recent ruling out of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida highlights the importance of choosing qualified counsel in complex cases, such as patent litigation.

In Global Glass Technologies, Inc. v. Research Frontiers, Inc. (MD FL Feb. 21, 2024), plaintiff’s counsel’s failure to conduct pre-suit analysis of the plaintiff’s patent claims resulted not only in dismissal of his client’s claims, but sanctions against the attorney and his law firm.

Failing to perform appropriate due diligence before selecting counsel can have deleterious effects on the success of your claims.

The plaintiff, Global Glass Technologies, Inc., filed patent and breach of contract claims against multiple defendants.  Suspecting that plaintiff’s counsel may have not done his pre-filing homework, defendant’s counsel probed plaintiff’s counsel’s pre-suit due diligence by sending a Rule 11 sanctions letter noting that “the patent infringement claim was insufficiently investigated.”  Undeterred, plaintiff continued to press its claims, leading to a second and third Rule 11 sanctions letter, and ultimately motions for sanctions and summary judgment.

The hearing on defendants’ motions revealed that plaintiff’s counsel had not performed required, pre-suit investigation of the patent claims.  The court stated “[p]laintiff could not explain any pre-suit patent claim charts it had created, analyzed, reviewed, or relied on before filing the Second Amended Complaint.”  Attempting to explain his behavior, plaintiff’s counsel admitted that this was his first patent case as lead attorney. The court was unpersuaded by plaintiff’s counsel’s “problematic” explanations which appeared to the court “to have been manufactured for the sanctions hearing and in, some instances, the moment.”  Indeed, the hearing went so poorly that during the hearing the plaintiff tried to fire its lawyer. 

Following the hearing, the court granted the motion for sanctions, imposing monetary sanctions against plaintiff’s counsel and his law firm.  The court also granted summary judgment to the defendants on the patent claims, finding that “despite being provided a generous amount of time to do so, Plaintiff has been unable to find an attorney to co-sign [counsel’s] assertions or review and competently refile nonfrivolous claims.” 

Indeed, given its counsel’s conduct, plaintiff had difficulties bringing on new counsel in the case.  K&L Gates briefly appeared in the litigation on behalf of plaintiff, but withdrew its representation shortly after the defendants’ counsel shared the prior Rule 11 sanctions letters it previously served on the plaintiff. 

Global Glass’s woes should teach an important lesson to litigants — before picking counsel, doing due diligence is not optional, but mandatory.  Choosing qualified and experienced counsel is critical, as it weighs heavily on your chances of success in litigation.  While this is, of course, true in all cases, it is even more the case in highly technical matters like patent litigation, where having qualified counsel is critical to navigate thorny procedural and substantive issues.