The U.S. Supreme Court case Pavelic & LeFlore v. Marvel Entertainment Group, a Division of Cadence Industries Corp., et al., 1989 revolved around the interpretation of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which mandates sanctions for attorneys who sign frivolous pleadings or motions. The law firm Pavelic & LeFlore had been sanctioned by a lower court for filing an improper lawsuit on behalf of their client against Marvel Entertainment Group and others. However, they argued that only individual lawyers could be held responsible under Rule 11, not entire firms. The Supreme Court agreed with this argument in a unanimous decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ruling that only those individuals who actually signed the offending documents were liable to be sanctioned under Rule 11.

In the dissenting opinion for Pavelic & LeFlore v. Marvel Entertainment Group, Justice Stevens argued that the majority's interpretation of Rule 11 was too narrow and failed to consider its broader purpose. He contended that the rule should not only apply to individual attorneys but also law firms as a whole because they often act as a single entity in legal proceedings. By limiting sanctions solely to individuals who sign pleadings, motions or other papers, he believed it would allow law firms to evade responsibility by simply assigning blame on one attorney while ignoring systemic issues within their organization. Furthermore, he suggested that this approach could potentially undermine public confidence in the judicial system by allowing unethical practices at larger scales without any significant consequences.