Last February, we blogged about Judge McBryde’s 114-page Triple Tee Golf opinion sanctioning several attorneys (and their client) for allegedly violating Rule 11. We just noticed that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an unpublished opinion from April 2011 (available here), vacated the sanctions Order and remanded it to the district court for assignment to a different judge to consider the sanctions question.
The sanctions Order was premised on whether Judge McBryde “said and did the things of which [an individual] accused him[.]” Judge McBryde’s Order stated: “The court judicially knows that the undersigned did not say the things [the individual] stated in his declaration[.]” The Fifth Circuit, without considering the merits of the Order, found that Judge McBryde was disqualified from presiding over the sanctions hearing because he had personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts. See 28 U.S.C. §455(b)(1) (a judge “shall . . . disqualify himself . . . [w]here he has . . . personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding.”).