Zapata Hermanos Sucesores, S.A. v. Hearthside Baking Company, Inc., D/B/A Maurice Lenell Cooky Company

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

Zapata, a Mexican corporation that supplied Lenell, a U.S. wholesale baker of cookies, with cookie tins, sued Lenell for breach of contract and won. The district judge ordered Lenell to pay Zapata $550,000 in attorneys’ fees. From that order, which the judge based both on a provision of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, Jan. 1, 1988, 15 U.S.C.App., and on the inherent authority of the courts to punish the conduct of litigation in bad faith, Lenell appeals.

The Convention, of which both the U.S. and Mexico are signatories, provides, as its…