"His acts of misconduct with regard to the fee petitions are among the most egregious that this court has seen in almost 14 years on the bench," federal Judge Susan Illston wrote in sanctioning a San Francisco plaintiff lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx.
The lawyer, Waukeen McCoy, is also forbidden from filing any more FedEx-related fee petitions in the future, according to an article in The Recorder legal newspaper.
McCoy had requested $2 million in fees. The fee fight started after McCoy won jury verdicts against FedEx for workplace discrimination. Illston appointed a special master, Edward Swanson of Swanson McNamara & Haller, to deal with the fees, and FedEx accused McCoy of fabricating many of his hourly estimates, wrote Recorder staff writer Dan Levine.
McCoy got into deeper trouble with the special master, and now Illston, after he failed to produce contemporaneous time records he had been ordered to turn over. Illston also found that the vast majority of McCoy's petitions were not actually based on such time records, contrary to what McCoy had repeatedly represented in sworn declarations.
McCoy, who graduated from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1993.