By the eleventh month, I’d sold my grandmother’s jewelry, canceled every subscription, and learned more about civil procedure than I ever wanted to know. My attorney filed one motion I barely understood: attorney’s fees for litigation misconduct. She walked into the hearing carrying a single timeline—every continuance he’d requested, every motion he’d lost, every last-minute cancellation, every document he’d claimed not to have that mysteriously appeared only after subpoenas. She didn’t argue much. She let the dates speak.
His attorney insisted they were simply “vigorously defending the case.” The judge flipped through the timeline, then compared it to the docket. Fourteen months. Three continuances requested by him. Two motions the court had already called meritless. Discovery deadlines ignored until the eve of hearings. Finally, the judge looked over her glasses and said, “The court will not reward a strategy designed to exhaust the other party financially.”
The order was signed before lunch. He was directed to reimburse a substantial portion of my attorney’s fees and warned that any further unnecessary delays would bring additional sanctions. As we walked out of the courthouse, he didn’t say a word. My attorney folded the order, handed me a copy, and smiled. “He said he’d drag this out until you couldn’t afford it,” she said. “He forgot judges know exactly what that tactic looks like.”
