Thomas Dodson v. Marvin Runyon, Postmaster General for the U.S. Postal Service

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that defendants are not “under any duty to take any steps to bring [a] case to trial”
• requiring courts to consider the relative roles of the attorney in client “[i]n deciding on the suitability of lesser sanctions . . .”
• deeming it “important” for the district court to assess “whether a tactical benefit was sought by the delay”
• finding dismissal for failure to prosecute inappropriate where delay resulted from lawyer’s failure to attend to his client’s case and lesser financial sanctions against lawyer were not considered by district court
• court may only employ the sanction of dismissal where the court finds that lesser sanctions would prove ineffective
• “We have long-suggested imposing sanctions directly on dilatory lawyers in appropriate cases, and we continue to commend to our district judges this ‘sound practice.’”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).