Conn

—Retired Associate Petitioner Conn is the plaintiff in a wrongful termination action. Real parties (collectively referred to as Farmers) represent a majority of the defendants. Petitioner Street is Conn’s attorney. In this original proceeding, we review an order of the respondent court holding petitioners in contempt for disobeying a court order directing them to return to Farmers certain documents taken by petitioner Conn at the time of his departure from Farmers. The respondent court fined Conn and Street each $38,000 ($1,000 per day for 38 days). We issued an order to show cause at the direction of the Supreme Court. We now hold that the court correctly found petitioners to be in contempt, but erred in punishing petitioners for 38 separate acts of contempt.

Facts

Prior to his departure from Farmers, petitioner Conn was the head of Farmers’s investigation division. Originally, the purpose of the investigation division was to ferret out potential fraud by third parties (either insureds or claimants), but later the work of the division encompassed the investigation of internal fraud within various Farmers companies. The nature of the division’s work was such that…