En Banc San Antonio Court of Appeals Affirms Chapter 10 Sanction
A divided en banc Fourth Court of Appeals held that a court may award sanctions for both expenses and attorney's fees as well as for inconvenience and harassment and order them paid to the moving party. Applying the Texas Supreme Court's recent opinion in Low v. Henry, the majority held the trial court had broad discretion to deter future misconduct and that the list of sanctions in section10.004(c) was not exclusive. The dissents disagreed and argued that the additional sanction for inconvenience was improper and that the list of availble sanctions did not include payment of a penalty to the opposing party. The majority opinion in Unifund CCR Partners v. Villa can be found here. The dissenting opinions are here and here.
