Failure to Follow Court Directive Nearly Snatched Defeat From Victory

“Entirely on our own initiative, we found it appropriate to sanction plaintiff counsel Jason Castro under Rule 11 for his reckless and unrepentant use of AI…. And instead of taking full ownership of his error, he attempted to convince us that he merely made clerical mistakes.”  The Doc App, Inc. v. Leafwell, Inc., 2026 WL 2905348 (M.D. Fla. Sep. 28, 2026).

After Leafwell was awarded a fee sanction, however, it did not follow the court’s direction on liquidating its claim.  The court wrote:

For the fee sanction, the parties were directed to make a good faith attempt to resolve the amount and to apprise us of any dispute. But [defendant] Leafwell and its counsel chose instead to simply make the situation worse. Turning a blind eye to the fact that all of its piling on was denied as moot (a motion for sanctions, a motion for leave to reply to Castro’s response to our order to show cause, and a request for oral argument), Leafwell and its counsel cast aside the obligations imposed by 28 U.S.C. § 1927, Rules 1 and 11, and the Civil Action Order…; ignored the directive in the sanctions order to simply file a notice advising of any hourly-rate or amount-of-hours dispute…; and filed an 83-page submission seeking $215,401.60 in fees!…

Id. at *1 (emphasis added). The court wrote: “They’re lucky we don’t require them to reimburse Castro for responding to it.”

The court wrote: “As tempting as it might be to zero out the fee award (and justifiably so), we stay the course on which we embarked at our own choosing.”  Id. The court awarded a Rule 11 sanction of $6,720, after a detailed analysis of the record.