Background
DMARCIAN, INC sued DMARC ADVISOR BV in North Carolina for intellectual property violations. During parallel proceedings in the Netherlands, DMARC ADVISOR BV’s counsel made representations to the Dutch court that the North Carolina case had not yet reached its merits phase. The North Carolina district court issued a correction order requiring the foreign counsel to submit a statement clarifying the timeline and nature of the North Carolina case. Pressly Millen, an American attorney for the foreign entity, failed to submit the required statement, leading the district court to hold him in civil contempt and suspend his admission to the Western District of North Carolina bar.
The court’s reasoning
The court first established jurisdiction, ruling that Millen, as a nonparty to the underlying litigation, could immediately appeal the contempt order. On the merits, the court applied an abuse-of-discretion standard. It emphasized that civil contempt is remedial and requires the movant to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the violation caused harm. The court found that DMARCIAN failed to produce evidence showing that Millen’s failure to file the statement caused specific harm or that filing it would have altered the outcome in the Dutch court. The court noted the sanction was punitive rather than coercive and vacated the contempt adjudication.
On the merits, we conclude that the district court abused its discretion in finding the attorney in civil contempt when the moving party failed to produce evidence that it had been harmed by the attorney’s alleged noncompliance with a prior court order.
DMARCIAN, INC v. PRESSLY MCAULEY MILLEN, 25-1085 (4th Cir. July 10, 2026)
What it means going forward
The decision clarifies that nonparty attorneys may appeal contempt orders immediately and reinforces the requirement that civil contempt sanctions must be supported by evidence of actual harm to the movant.