When Robert Ward arrived at the Tampa federal courthouse in January, a guard asked him to remove his belt. It’s a request made thousands of times a day across the country as security breezes people through x-ray machines in an ongoing effort to keep America’s courtrooms safe from smartphones. But Ward may have felt he had the TSA Precheck of court passes, because he allegedly informed the guard that, as an attorney, he didn’t need to take off his belt. The guard disagreed and this, my friends, is where “hijinks ensue.”

Willing to raise the ante on a guard who, at this point was pot committed to get Ward’s belt off whether or not it was required by official policy, Ward completely took off his pants and threw them in the bin because hardcore litigators are always ready to show the world their briefs.

Now… this wouldn’t have been the choice most of us would make, but he definitely assured the court that he wasn’t smuggling anything in. More importantly, he became a trendsetter taking this step months before the rest of the legal profession began working in underwear.

The court didn’t necessarily see it that was and issued a show cause order for Ward to defend his pro hac vice admission after the incident. That was back in February, and Ward responded:

Ward’s April 15 response said he was given permission to remove his pants after court security officers refused to conduct a standard patdown. “Counsel has thus apologized for any inconvenience that this regrettable event may have caused,” Ward wrote. “No one was prejudiced thereby.”

But it’s cited again in an April 13 filing arguing that Ward should be kicked off the case. Wyndham Vacation Resorts is suing Ward’s client — a Missouri law firm — for allegedly “inducing timeshare owners to default on their payments,” and took this position in opposing the motion of Ward’s pro hac vice sponsors to withdraw for unrelated reasons. It might feel like a below-the-belt attack to remove an attorney and undermine the defense, but if you can’t trust a timeshare operator to be acting with the purest of intentions, then who can you trust?

Wyndham argues Ward has put together “oftentimes incoherent and nonsensical” submissions and pushed discovery misconduct. Ward denies all of this:

“Wyndham over-argues its case and with an inappropriate viciousness that is seldom seen in the federal courts,” Ward wrote. “It is Wyndham’s purpose to destroy lead counsel’s legal practice and, thus, to serve a ruined attorney, as an object-lesson in futuro, to any younger attorney who would dare to oppose Wyndham’s continuing unethical, unlawful and fraudulent practices in the sale of their so-called ‘timeshares,’” he wrote.

Which is a much more artful way of saying, “liar, liar, pants…”

Lawyer who took off pants at security checkpoint fights bid to be ousted from representing clients [ABA Journal]

Atty Who Depantsed At Court Security Check Fights DQ Bid [Law360]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.