In re: Van R. Irion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
File Name: 26a0196n.06
No. 25-5874
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
In re: VAN R. IRION,
Respondent - Appellant.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
EASTERN DISTRICT OF
TENNESSEE
OPINION
Before: KETHLEDGE, WHITE, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.
KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. The district court sanctioned attorney Van Irion after it
found that he had violated several rules of professional conduct. Irion appeals the district court’s
order imposing sanctions. We reject his arguments and affirm.
I.
In 2020, Irion began to represent two clients—Glenn Whiting and ARD Property
Management—in a suit against the city of Athens, Tennessee, and two city officials. Whiting
claimed that the officials had retaliated against him by condemning a building owned by ARD
Property Management—a trust for which, he initially said, he served as the “executor.”
Throughout the litigation, Irion represented that Whiting was either a “beneficiary,” a “trustee,” or
both, of the ARD trust—which, Irion argued, entitled Whiting to compensatory damages for costs
incurred because of the building’s condemnation. At trial, Whiting failed to present any evidence
that he was a trustee or a beneficiary. Meanwhile, the defendants introduced trust documents
which showed that Whiting was not a beneficiary, and that he could become a trustee only at the

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discretion of the board of trustees. The district court thereafter entered judgment as a matter of
law in favor of the defendants on the issue of compensatory damages.
In 2023, Irion began to represent Whiting in another suit against the city of Athens and
several city officials before the same magistrate and district judges. Irion eventually withdrew
from representing Whiting, saying that he could no longer effectively represent Whiting due to the
“clear bias” displayed by the district judge. Whiting proceeded pro se. Yet Irion secretly continued
to draft and edit filings for Whiting, which Whiting then submitted under his own name.
In August 2024, the district judge who presided over the two earlier suits (and others filed
by Irion) ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for misrepresenting, among
other things, Whiting’s status as a trustee in the first suit, and for ghostwriting Whiting’s filings in
the second suit after he had withdrawn. The judge appointed an attorney to investigate “allegations
of misconduct” and to “prosecute any disciplinary proceedings.” Irion moved for the judge to
recuse himself from the disciplinary proceeding, which he declined to do. After several months
of discovery, including Irion’s deposition, the court entered an amended order to show cause. In
response, Irion admitted that he had repeatedly and incorrectly represented that Whiting was a
trustee or beneficiary of the ARD trust, but said he had not done so intentionally, and that he had
relied on Whiting’s representations.
Irion waived his right to a hearing. The court thereafter issued an exhaustive, 80-page
opinion, in which it found that Irion had violated several rules of professional conduct in both
suits. The court therefore suspended Irion from practice in the Eastern District of Tennessee for
five years, to be followed by a two-year probationary period, and ordered him to write a letter of
apology to the affected defendants and their attorneys. It also ordered Irion to reimburse the court
for the expense of the disciplinary proceeding. This appeal followed.

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II.
“Federal courts have the inherent authority to discipline attorneys practicing before them
and to set standards for their conduct.” Berger v. Cuyahoga Cnty. Bar Ass’n, 983 F.2d 718, 724
(6th Cir. 1993). The District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee has formalized this
authority under its local rules. See Theard v. United States, 354 U.S. 278, 281-83 (1957). The
rules adopt the Tennessee Supreme Court’s rules of professional conduct as the “minimum
standards” for members of the court’s bar; they provide that the court may discipline those who
violate that standard; and they prescribe procedures for disciplinary proceedings. E.D. Tenn. L.R.
83.6, 83.7.
We review the district court’s imposition of sanctions under this authority for an abuse of
discretion. Jones v. Illinois Cent. R. Co., 617 F.3d 843, 850 (6th Cir. 2010).
A.
Irion argues that the district judge denied him due process in three ways. First, Irion
contends that the judge, by failing to recuse, denied him his right to a fair tribunal. A judge denies
a party that right if the judge presides over a case where the objective “probability” of actual bias
on his part is unacceptably high. Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 887 (2009).
Here, Irion says that an objective observer would have concluded that the judge could not be
impartial after Irion had accused him of manipulating case assignments to ensure that he presided
over Irion’s earlier suits; of filing the order to show cause to retaliate against Irion for his
complaints about that alleged manipulation in an en banc petition; and of improperly removing
from the docket the initial order to show cause. But “not every attack on a judge disqualifies him
from sitting.” Id. at 880 (citation modified). And Irion’s allegations were not comparable to the
kinds of extreme attacks—for instance, “highly personal aspersions”—that have been held to

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prevent the average judge from remaining neutral. See Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455,
466 (1971).
Second, Irion contends that the judge denied him his right to a fair tribunal because the
judge both initiated the disciplinary proceeding and presided over it. But a tribunal may combine
“investigative and adjudicative functions” without necessarily offending that right. See Withrow
v. Larkin, 421 U.S. 35, 58 (1975). And Irion has not shown that the procedures used in the
disciplinary proceeding—or his prior relationship with the judge—made the judge “so
psychologically wedded” to the allegations made in the order to show cause that he could not be
fair. Id. at 57. On the contrary, the record shows that the judge, after he had received evidence,
withdrew or declined to find established several of his initial allegations. Irion therefore cannot
make out a violation of his right to a fair tribunal.
Third, Irion contends that he failed to receive fair notice of the charges against him, because
the judge amended the order to show cause after Irion had been deposed and had produced
evidence in discovery. True, under some circumstances, a tribunal can violate a defendant’s right
to fair notice by amending the charges against him after the proceeding has begun. In re Ruffalo,
390 U.S. 544, 551 (1968). But such a violation occurs only if the amendment prejudices the
defendant. See Zauderer v. Off. of Disciplinary Couns. of Sup. Ct. of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626, 654,
654 n.18 (1985). Here, though the amended order cited additional rules of professional conduct
that Irion allegedly violated, it contained the same factual claims as did the first order: that Irion
had misrepresented Whiting’s relationship with the trust, and that he had ghostwritten some of
Whiting’s filings while Whiting was nominally proceeding pro se. Irion fails to develop any
argument as to how he was prejudiced by the amended order, so he has not shown a violation of
his right to fair notice.

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B.
Irion raises four more arguments. First, he argues the judge abused his discretion by failing
to recuse himself under 28 U.S.C. § 144. That provision requires a judge to do so when an
objective observer with knowledge of all the facts would question the judge’s impartiality. See
Alemarah v. Gen. Motors, LLC, 980 F.3d 1083, 1086 (6th Cir. 2020). Here, Irion asserts that the
judge failed to credit his allegations that there was less than a 1-in-500 chance that the case
assignments in his two earlier suits had been random, and that others of his cases had also been
assigned to the judge; that the Bates stamps on documents in those other cases were retroactively
changed after a new judge was assigned to the case; and that the first two versions of the order to
show cause had been removed from the docket in the disciplinary proceeding. The judge, however,
reasonably concluded that these allegations—even taken as true—would fail to cause an objective
observer to question his impartiality, because they were all consistent with established procedures
of the court.
Second, Irion argues that the district court ordered him and Whiting to produce what he
says were privileged materials. But a party who asserts that material is privileged from disclosure
must establish that entitlement. See In re Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. Billing Pracs. Litig.,
293 F.3d 289, 294 (6th Cir. 2002). Here, both in the district court and on appeal, Irion made only
a conclusory assertion that either the attorney-client or work-product privileges applied to an
unspecified group of documents. He therefore has not established an entitlement to either
privilege.
Third, Irion argues that the district court erroneously found that he had misrepresented the
trust documents in a motion in the second case. In that motion, Irion asserted that the trust
documents showed that Whiting eventually “would become” a trustee. But those documents

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instead showed that the board of trustees could, in its discretion, either “fill” a trustee vacancy, or
decline to fill it. The district court therefore did not err in finding that Irion had misrepresented
the documents.
Finally, Irion asserts that the court’s order to write a letter of apology was unconstitutional.
He fails to develop any argument or cite any authority in support of this assertion, however, so he
has forfeited the issue. See United States v. Stewart, 628 F.3d 246, 256 (6th Cir. 2010).
The district court’s order is affirmed.

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